


Claude von Riegan and the Secret of the Old College

by dustofwarfare, ohmyfae



Series: Garreg Mach U [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, M/M, Minor peril, More Pairings as they Appear, Multi, Sex, Side Hilda/Edelgard, Some references to grief, mystery au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 60,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/pseuds/dustofwarfare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: Claude von Riegan -- Otherwise known as Prince Khalid, first in line to inherit the throne of Almyra -- has just transferred to Garreg Mach U, where he hopes to pursue his degree without having to dodge tabloids and curious stares at every turn. But when he finds that another prince is on campus, the charming and earnest Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, he inevitably draws Dimitri into his orbit. Soon, he finds that Garreg Mach U is not all that it seems to be, and that something sinister lies beneath the quiet facade of the college, something that could put everyone he cares for in danger.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Jeritza von Hrym/My Unit | Byleth
Series: Garreg Mach U [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713958
Comments: 93
Kudos: 262





	1. Chapter 1

A new moon rises over Garreg Mach University, and the trees that line the quad shiver in an unseasonable wind from the fields. The wind whirls along quiet streets, rattles windows plastered with posters for empty apartments and poetry readings, and stirs the detritus in the gutters left behind by anxious freshmen only just settling in their dorms. It whistles along red brick and weathered stone, howls in drain pipes and shrieks over the roofs, and when the back door to the Sothis Memorial building scrapes along the sidewalk, it twines around the legs of a man with wild brown eyes and trembling hands.

He doesn’t have long. The papers he took from his office in the history department creak under his arm, and he leaves the door swinging open as he strides across the quad. There are only a few parking lots scattered throughout campus, and his car is down a set of narrow stairs behind the science building, hidden in the shade of an ancient oak. It isn’t far. He can make it, if he’s careful. 

A shadow flickers out of the corner of his eye. The wind howls at his back.

He picks up speed. He hasn’t run in years, not properly, and his shoes slide on the concrete as he tries not to look back, tries not to think about the shadows keeping pace with him, tries not to think about the thumping in the grass on either side.

He reaches the stair, and jerks to a stop at the touch of a hand at his neck.

“You can’t just leave, Professor,” a voice says, soft and sickly sweet. Behind him, the shadows converge in the grass. The stairs yawn before him, descending into the dark, and fingers clench on his collar. “Not without saying goodbye.”

***

“Claude von Riegan, you ridiculous, unfairly gorgeous bastard, get down from that _fucking_ balcony!”

The weak metal railing of room 3B in the Golden Deer dorm shakes dangerously as Claude, dressed in faded jeans and a sweater he stole from his roommate five minutes ago, balances on one foot and pins a sign over the wall. It’s a pair of wooden antlers framing a crown, made of pale polished wood that stands out against the red brick, and he pretends to wobble as he jams it in place.

“Hilda!” he cries. Far below him, a young woman in a low-cut dress and pink hair squints into the sun. “I thought I heard your dulcet tones.”

“Shut up and get _down!_ ” she shouts. Claude laughs, tosses his curly dark hair out of his eyes, and hops onto the balcony. The railing groans alarmingly as he does, and he stops to bow to Hilda, who flips him a rude gesture. 

At least his roommate isn’t here for this. Lorenz Gloucester practically withered when he saw Claude sprawled on the top bunk, his boots on the mattress, hair tied back with one of the commemorative scarves they always give the freshmen. Lorenz tends to view Claude with the horrified disdain of a nobleman forced to shake hands with a peasant in the street, which, all things considered, is kind of hilarious. But it makes sense. Before Claude came along, butting into Lorenz’s top spot in the Alliance Org internship that summer, Lorenz was the darling of the poli-sci department. It took Claude only a week, with his credits from Almyra’s best university and _extra_ real world experience only the head of the department knows about, to topple him from grace. He probably hoped that Claude would go back to Almyra by now, honestly.

Instead, they’re going to spend the next eight months together. Claude grins and swings open the balcony door.

“Claude!” There’s pounding on the door across the hall, and Claude steps around Lorenz’s suitcases and clears his throat. Hilda whips around, hair flying in her face, and flings her arms around his neck. He backs up, sputtering out a laugh, and they both go down with a thump that shakes the floor.

“Of course we’re in the same dorm,” Hilda says. “Thank god. My roommate’s apparently, like, a horse girl, or a ghost, or a ghost horse, because all I’ve seen for the past _week_ are pictures of horses next to her bed and like, the suggestion of a person. Where _were_ you, anyways? Juniors moved in ages ago.”

“Had to go home for a few weeks,” Claude says. “My dad, he pines.”

Hilda rolls her eyes. She’s still half crouched on top of him, her pink hair a curtain over his face. “Thought you might’ve gone back to wherever to stay.”

“Almyra,” Claude says. “It’s a country, Hilda. Right next to this one.”

She puffs out her cheeks. “Yeah, okay. Look, all I know is they invented math, which is terrible, and they have a billion princes.”

Claude stops himself from saying _five isn’t a billion, actually,_ and holds his tongue. 

“And isn’t Claude Von Riegan an Alliance name?” she asks. “It isn’t very, you know.”

Claude can feel his smile tense, slightly, and he rolls her off. “My mom works with the embassy.” The lie comes easy, effortless. “Dual citizenship, baby. I’ve got the best of both monarchies.”

“Ugh. Politics.”

“You’re literally majoring in this, Hilda.”

Hilda flaps a hand and uses Lorenz’s suitcase to get up. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Don’t depress me. So I was thinking we should go to the Abyss tonight.”

Claude considers pointing out that it technically _is_ the first day of classes, but he did pass a guy drinking vodka out of a thermos near the lunch hall this morning. He winks at her. “Sure. The Abyss. That sounds real fun.” 

“You’ll love it,” Hilda says. She flops onto Lorenz’s bunk. “Just make sure to wear lots of leather, and you’ll be fine. Or a _little_ leather. I have a miniskirt if you want to show off,” she adds, looking Claude up and down.

Claude places a hand over his heart, and Hilda snorts. “Oh, Hilda,” he says. “Now you’re really speaking my language.”

Claude has History 250 at noon, but there’s a sign on the door in the Sothis Memorial building that says classes will resume tomorrow, so he has time to explore campus before his fencing class. It’s odd—He’s used to being noticed, back in Almyra, but gazes seem to lock onto him even here. Even when he’s just Claude, using his mother’s last name and a considerable amount of money to keep his first one under wraps.

_Khalid._ It’s a dead giveaway in Almyra, where everything he _is_ marks him as the oldest son of the king and the first in line to take the throne. Here, even the poli-sci majors don’t bat an eye when he introduces himself as Claude, because Von Riegans are apparently everywhere. He has more distant cousins than he can shake a stick at, and besides, no one would believe that Prince Khalid, son of King Malik, Conqueror of the Starry Skies, would actually _want_ to hide.

_Especially_ King Malik.

Claude shoves his hands in the pockets of Lorenz’s sweatshirt and strolls across the quad. The building where his fencing class takes place is behind one of the student parking lots, but there’s a shortcut near a narrow stairway by the science building. Claude lays a hand on the railing, winces, and pulls it away. Flakes of rust stick to his fingers, and he brushes them off on his jeans, leaving a faint reddish stain behind.

He takes the stairs two at a time. It’s cooler here, far from the mountainous border of Almyra, and fall is just starting to tint the leaves a faint gold and red. Squirrels skitter in the trees, which are _definitely_ taking over—Fódlan loves their shade, apparently—and a group of bicyclists circle the lot and go back the way they came, jingling softly. 

The brochures like to say Garreg Mach used to be a monastery, back when people actually believed the goddess liked to walk around, bless people’s swords, and gently urge them to stab each other, and the PE building is built into the foundations of what used to be a chapel. So when Claude enters the room where his intermediate fencing class is supposed to take place, he comes face to face with a life-sized stained glass depiction of the goddess. She smiles down on him, a sword clasped in her hands, as if to say, _Welcome, young prince. Please, be so kind as to disembowel my enemies if you have a moment to spare._

Claude pushes open the door, examines the wide, sunny chapel lined with fencing equipment, and laughs.

“ _Claude!_ ” Lorenz’s voice comes out in what he probably thinks is a whisper, but sound carries across the old chapel, and all the gathered students by the practice mats look up as Claude sweeps in. There aren’t many—There’s a young man with grey-white hair nervously practicing his form, a guy with dark hair tied up and out of his angular face, and a tall, broad-shouldered blond who only glances at Claude once before looking away, surrounded by a handful of others. Lorenz strides for Claude, and Claude smiles and strips off the sweater.

“Thought you might get cold,” he says. He’s just wearing a tank, now, and he takes no small satisfaction from the slightly panicky look in Lorenz’s eyes as he snatches the sweater back. “You’re welcome.”

Lorenz narrows his eyes at him, and Claude flashes him his best public smile. Behind Lorenz, the tall blond lowers his brows.

“That’s everyone, then,” a low, almost mournful voice booms out across the chapel. Professor Jeritza, a baleful-looking man with thick blond hair tied back in a ribbon, gestures to the wall. “Get dressed and let’s see if you can kill each other.”

“Oh, it’s _that_ kind of class,” Claude says. 

The blond guy hides a smile behind his hand, and Claude starts pulling down protective gear from a rack on the wall. He knows he has company when he feels the heat of a taller man at his back, and a hand slips alongside Claude’s to tug a glove free.

“Your highness,” a voice says.

Both Claude and his companion turn. Claude tries to play it off as casual disinterest, but the man beside him ducks his head, brushing shaggy hair out of his eyes.

“Ashe, you know you don’t have to call me that,” he says. Claude raises his brows. “Just Dimitri is fine.”

The man who spoke, the one with the fashionable grey and white hair, flushes pink. “Um. Yes. But. Uh.”

Dimitri. Claude leans in with a hand on his hip, trying to get a closer look at the man next to him, and almost laughs. He’s seen Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd in the news; The young crown prince of Faerghus, destined to take the throne as soon as he comes of age at twenty-two. He always looks nervous in his press conferences, as though he’s trying to avoid the camera, and he has something of that look in his cold blue eyes now. 

Oh, hell. Now that he’s looking at them properly, Claude’s starting to recognize more than one face among Dimitri’s cadre of supporters in class. The dark-haired one is some kind of… duke, he thinks. Or will be—He remembers seeing those cheekbones at a conference once. And the redhead’s familiar enough from the tabloids; Sylvain Gautier, the man who stole his father’s inheritance right out from under his older brother’s feet. One of Claude’s half-brothers, the oldest, had taped the magazine to his door when it happened. In fact, Claude’s pretty sure he saw one or two of the others in the tabloids, too. 

One day, Dimitri and Claude will have to be King Dimitri and King Khalid, exchanging dull, dry speeches about how they don’t want to rekindle border disputes in the mountains, promise. For now, Claude can get a good look at the future king of Faerghus without the danger of him looking too closely back. 

They split up into pairs, and unsurprisingly, there’s a moment of hesitation among Dimitri’s followers. Dimitri’s expression draws tight, just a little, and Claude wonders why the hell no one ever taught him how to hide his disappointment behind a polite smile.

“Hey,” Claude says. Dimitri blinks and gives Claude another one of those curious looks. “Let’s see if we can kill each other, I guess.”

Dimitri smiles. It’s a charming smile, slight and unguarded, and he actually _bows_ a little. “Of course. I’m Dimitri.”

“Claude.” He jerks his head, and Dimitri gamely follows him to the end of the line. A few of his friends—or his _people,_ Claude isn’t sure yet—watch them go, but no one tries to intervene. “So let’s get the whole _I know you’re a prince_ thing out of the way and pretend we danced around it for an hour, so you won’t be surprised when I beat you.”

Dimitri’s smile twists. “It isn’t every day you have the chance to stab a prince, I suppose.”

“Yeah, it’s just three times a week, according to my schedule.” Claude hefts the fencing foil in his hand. It’s too dull to do more than bruise, really, but he could drive it into someone with enough force. “So you probably guessed I’m kind of new around here.”

“Oh. You are?”

He looks so _earnest._ “Uh, yeah. Unless there’s more than one future world leader around here and everyone’s bored of it? In my old college, people tripped over each other if they even heard a celebrity was the next town over.”

Dimitri actually thinks about this, as though he’s never considered his own consequence before. “Things are rather quiet in Garreg Mach. It’s almost pleasant, really.” He puts on his helmet, and Claude fixes his, sword at the ready. Dimitri darts forward, ignores Claude’s clever feint that usually throws everyone but his father off guard, and makes a sound of approval when Claude comes up from under his sword arm to stab him in the chest. 

“What do people do for fun around here, then?” Claude asks. “Climb trees?”

Dimitri stabs his arm, which is technically off limits, and draws back. “My apologies. There’s a craft brewery down the hill, I suppose.”

Oh, _gods._ “I said _fun,_ Dimitri,” Claude says. He tries to disarm him, but Dimitri gets over _his_ guard this time. “Nice one!”

“You’re too kind. Well, there’s always the Abyss. It’s a… club, a few minutes away…”

“I know that one,” Claude says, as though he hasn’t been trying to drive him there this whole time. He raps on his sword to startle him and gets him right below the throat, just in range. “Someone invited me there tonight. You and your friends wanna come?”

Dimitri steps back. “I don’t—I hardly go to—“

“Come on. It’s that or I have to invite Lorenz.” He will anyway, because he actually kind of _likes_ Lorenz, for all that he really needs to loosen up a little, but he’s not about to tell him that. “Or the professor. I know like, five people here.”

He presses his sword right above Dimitri’s heart, and Dimitri raises a hand in surrender. “Alright,” he says. He takes off his helmet, and his hair is disheveled and ragged in his eyes. Claude has to stop himself from reaching up to push it back. “Perhaps I’ll see you there.”

“Looking forward to it,” Claude says, and when he smiles, wide and wicked and flushed by victory, Dimitri’s cheeks darken. They stand there a moment, panting slightly, Claude grinning like a fox, before they hear a cough behind them.

“If you’re done,” Professor Jeritza says, and Dimitri blushes darker still as they both realize that everyone else has been standing politely in place this whole time, staring at them with varying degrees of concern and amusement. “I thought I might actually conduct a _lesson_.”

“Of course,” Claude says, as Dimitri runs a hand over his beet red face. “Conduct away.”

***

Claude’s managed to convince just about the whole floor to go out that night, which is a surprise given the various levels of studiousness among his classmates. Leonie is only going because there’s no cover the first week _and_ she already did all her homework, Lysithea is probably just trying to see if she can get in without being carded, and Raphael claims the pizza place next door, Shady’s, is the best in town. Ignatz just said, “Okay, sure,” looking like he wasn’t sure what Abyss even _is_ but seemingly chill enough to go even if it were, like, the bottom of a lake or something. Obviously Hilda is up for an adventure, and Lorenz, for all he likes to act like Claude does everything wrong from breathing to blinking and everything in between, had agreed readily enough. 

Hilda’s roommate, who Claude has only spoken to through a closed door, answered with a, “Umm, I’m sorry, who are you?” so he’s not so sure she’s going to make an appearance. 

Still. This is happening, Claude’s dressed to kill and the prey he wants to slay is the future king of Faerghus. He’s looking forward to the night ahead, and hopeful that Dimitri won’t decide to veto the club for that craft brewery. Honestly. The only people who go to craft breweries for fun are the thirty-plus crowd who bring their weird hybrid dogs and play obscure Kickstarter-funded card games loudly in the corner. 

At least, that’s what they do at home. His aunt Judith practically lives at Wyvern’s Flight. 

Claude’s not too much of a drinker, really; he’s seen a few relatives end up on the tabloids for partying while intoxicated -- Claude’s aunt _still_ hasn’t lived down a leaked photo from fifteen years ago of her and the ambassador from Morfis -- and he likes to keep his wits about him. But he does love dance clubs, from the people watching to the music to the dancing itself, but mostly he likes getting dressed up in clothes he would normally not wear to class and putting on his favorite eyeliner. 

Which Hilda is currently borrowing, bent over his dresser with her mouth wide open as she completes the wing on her right eye. 

“Why do girls always open their mouths when they put on eyeliner?” Claude asks, leaning against his door. He’s getting antsy, probably because this is the third time Hilda’s done this eye. 

“To tell boys to shut up when they offer commentary we didn’t ask for,” replies Hilda, which, zing. 

“Is there some reason you can’t do this in _your_ room?” Lorenz interrupts. “I’m too gay to care about your breasts in that top.” 

“Then look at Claude’s legs in that skirt and leave me alone,” Hilda says, pulling back to examine her handiwork. “Or go fix your hair.” 

“You’re using the only mirror,” huffs Lorenz. 

“I meant at a salon,” says Hilda, reaching for a tissue with a speculative look. 

“Hilda,” says Claude. “Either leave it or we’ll ask Ignatz. He’s the artist.” 

“Ugh, fine.” She steps back, examines herself in the mirror and then turns with her arms out. “So? How hot am I, on a scale of one to nuclear?” 

“Thermonuclear,” Claude answers, kissing his fingers. She really does look great, short pleated skirt and thigh-high black boots, one of those shirts with a cut-out over her generous breasts and a corset top, pink hair done up in two pigtails. She has a spiked bracelet on one arm, a velvet choker, and her boots are the kind you would expect a dominatrix to wear when she steps on you for money. Objectively none of it should go together, but oh, does it ever. 

“You look like a goth Lolita who lost her footwear and was rescued by a motorcycle cult and an aging punk rocker,” says Lorenz. 

Claude hides his laugh in a cough at the last second. That’s sort of funny, and also true. 

Hilda does not think so, though. “Okay, look, you wear a rose _unironically_ in your lapel --” 

“I didn’t say it didn’t work, darling, did I?” Lorenz interrupts. “Your chaos energy is pure, dial down the drama.” 

“Be nice or I won’t tell my brother you’re here,” Hilda says, sweet as poison. She bats her eyes at Lorenz. “And wouldn’t that ruin your day?” 

Claude pushes out of his lean against the door and interrupts this catfight with, “How do _I_ look? Give me your honest opinion, vicious gay and fellow disaster bi.” 

“I’m not vicious,” Lorenz complains, but he gives Claude a once-over. “You’ll do. But if _someone_ won’t mind a suggestion about their _accessories_ \--” 

Claude groans. 

“You should swap necklaces. The velvet choker would look better on Claude, and Hilda, the chain link matches the silver on your corset and the boots.” Lorenz raises an eyebrow and studies his nails. “You’re lucky you have me.” 

“I think he’s not wrong,” Hilda says, as close as she will apparently get to saying Lorenz is right about something. “Switch me?” 

Claude, knowing a losing battle when he sees one, switches. “Now do I get my compliments?” 

“Ugh, you’re like, the hottest guy at school, shut _up_ ,” Hilda says, smacking him on the arm. “You’re somehow wearing a mesh shirt _and_ fishnets and it’s not too much.” 

“I wouldn’t say that,” Lorenz adds, like he can’t help himself. 

Claude sighs and gives up. He’s fond of his outfit, which is combat boots -- real ones, he stole them from his uncle Nader -- and fishnets, Hilda’s leather skirt and a mesh shirt with a simple white sleeveless tank underneath. His hair is tied back, his nails painted a vivid bright yellow, and fine, the velvet choker is nice. Classy. His eyes are lined. He’s _killing_ it. 

“This is like, what you wear to seduce royalty, right?” 

“If they’re the trashy kind who end up in the tabloids, yes,” says Lorenz. “But the Gautiers haven’t been royalty in some time. Are we ready, finally?” 

“You look great,” Hilda tells him, linking her arm in his as they head out. 

The rest of them assemble in the lobby -- minus Hilda’s roommate -- and Claude is at least slightly mollified by Leonie’s wolf-whistle and Raphael’s smack on the back, saying _I’m not sure I get dudes in skirts, but you got some nice gams, buddy,_ which is...very Raphael, so, all right. 

Lysithea emerges from the elevators like a tiny, angry Hello Kitty doll that got lost in the Hot Topic clearance aisle. She’s wearing a black poufy skirt, bright red tights, black buckled boots -- honestly they’re pretty great -- a white lace top with a black collar, blood-red eyeshadow that clashes with her purple eyes and black lipstick. Her snow-white hair is done up in two twists on her head, each with a little devil horn sticking up. 

“Darling,” Lorenz says, while they all just _stare_ at her. “Darling, no.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” the littlest edgelord says. Her purse is shaped like a coffin. Claude might die. 

“You look like that ballerina from _Black Swan_ ,” Leonie offers. “You know, the angry one.” 

“Ballerinas are always angry,” says Hilda. “Trust me. I dated one. She was like, in a perpetual bad mood and all she ever did was smoke cigarettes.”

“It’s ‘cause they don’t eat enough,” says Raphael, who says that about everyone living with a mouth. He’s in jeans and a button-down, a departure from the _Garreg Mach U_ hoodie and sweatpants he’s usually wearing. 

Leonie is in tight pleather pants and a crop-top, which shows off her abs, her short red hair tousled with liberal application of pomade that sort of smells like cotton candy, which does not at all work with Claude’s mental view of Leonie.

And then, there’s Ignatz. 

“Is anyone going to ask,” Hilda whispers. 

“Not me,” Claude whispers back. “I’m afraid.” 

Ignatz, the strangest and weirdest of them all, is wearing what appears to be a black leather harness and skinny jeans. Regular ones, the kind Claude would wear to class. Ignatz also has on bright yellow Converse shoes. And his glasses. 

“Do you -- is there -- that’s. Very. A choice?” Leonie says, kindly. “Are you maybe thinking this is a different….kind of bar?” 

“She means you look like you want some big beefy dude to hang you from a meathook and spank you,” Lysithea says. “While you call him daddy.” She shrugs at the look she’s getting. “I’m nineteen, not nine.” 

“Someone needs to turn the parental controls back on your Internet browser,” Claude says. 

“I will literally kill you,” Lysithea snarls, which is kind of like a kitten in black lipstick threatening to fall asleep on you. “And then feed you to my pet snake.” 

“It’s stuffed,” Leonie whispers. 

“That’s what you think,” Lysithea growls, then stomps off in her angry boots toward the door. 

“I think I would love her if she weren’t twelve,” Claude says, fondly. Lysithea isn’t -- she’s nineteen and some kind of electrical engineering or biochemistry genius and probably, honestly, _could_ kill him. 

“I thought we -- it’s a club, right?” Ignatz says, looking bewildered as they make their way outside. “Isn’t this what people wear? I don’t -- I mean, the meathook thing...also not into that. Should I change?” 

“Nope, you’ve got this,” Claude says, because he knows this story; if they wait for Ignatz to change, he’ll overthink his outfit, Raphael will order a sandwich, Hilda will run upstairs “real quick” to fix her eyeliner, and they will never get to Abyss and it will be time for Claude to go to class. 

“Golden Deer, Assemble! We’re heading out,” he says. “Remember - no one buys the littlest edgelord any drinks --” 

“ _Fuck_ you, I’ll get them _myself_ \--” 

“We get a Fast Travel Cab back, don’t leave your drinks unintended, don’t cockblock Leonie --” 

“Bad word choice, there,” says Leonie. “But appreciated.” 

“And no leaving with anyone you don’t know,” Claude finishes. 

“Or any Gautiers,” Lorenz adds. “We don’t know where they’ve been.” 

“Point. Let’s go,” says Claude, then has to break into a jog to keep up with Lysithea, who despite being the size of a pixie, is almost a block ahead of them. 

***

“Just stay where you are and stop squirming.”

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, rightful heir to the throne of Faerghus, sits crammed in the side of Dedue’s car two blocks from the Abyss and tries not to fuss with his hair. It was probably a bad idea to drive, really, but Dedue offered, and Dimitri isn’t about to force Ingrid to walk all the way from the Blue Lions dorm to the Abyss in what have to be five inch heels. Which are currently swung over his legs while Ingrid ties ribbons in her hair. Combined with her flannel top, which sparkles with rhinestones on the shoulders, Dimitri isn’t exactly sure what look she’s going for.

“Ow! Watch your hand, you oaf.”

In the back, Sylvain is practically straddling Felix’s lap, holding his eyeliner brush out like a weapon while Felix presses himself to the seat. Sylvain’s wearing what looks like the cast-offs of a better brand of fetish site, with tight leather shorts, fishnets, and heavy black boots. His jacket is studded with metal spikes, but his chest is bare, and he parts his lips as he holds Felix’s face down with one hand and applies the brush with the other.

“You’re gonna look hot,” he says. “Trust me. If I’m gonna pick up a girl tonight, I don’t want to leave _poor, sweet little Felix_ out in the cold.”

“I’m not _looking_ for that,” Felix snarls. His dark hair is already starting to come loose from its ties, and he shifts uncomfortably under Sylvain, who is too focused on giving him wings to notice. Really, Dimitri thinks, eyeing the way Sylvain sits back on his lap, shorts riding up his thighs, it’s Felix’s fault for wearing leather pants in the first place. 

“Can we just walk the rest of the way?” Annette asks. She’s half sitting on Ashe, who is nervously toying with his unbuttoned shirt and the chain belt slung low over his pants. Dedue, who hasn’t changed out of his clothes from class, watches him through the rear view mirror, and Ashe blushes to his roots. Annette is in a sundress and cowboy boots, and she keeps trying to duck around Ashe to apply her lipgloss.

“Might as well,” Ingrid says. “Hey, your highness, are you sure you want to wear your rugby jacket tonight?”

Dimitri looks down. He’d agonized for nearly an hour on what to wear, grabbed whatever he had in his closet that was suitably black, and then had another crisis just before Dedue brought the car around. “I thought it might bring out some color.”

Sylvain, still holding Felix’s face in one hand, turns to Dimitri with a deeply pitying look.

“Oh, man. We’ve gotta fix this.”

“What?”

“I think you look nice, your highness,” Annette says. “Like. You know. A jock in a TV movie or something.” She sees Dimitri’s look and blanches. “In a cute way, I swear.”

“I can turn the car around,” Dedue says. “The craft bar is still open.”

Annette gasps. “Oh my gods, Dedue, don’t you dare. After I made Ashe all pretty and everything?”

Dedue glances at Ashe.

Ashe stares at his hands.

“Alright,” Dedue says, after a long, pregnant pause.

“Got it,” Felix says, and slams his fist on the back of his seat. The trunk pops, and Mercedes, dressed like a vampire who stumbled through a bridal boutique, rolls out onto the concrete and adjusts the veil over her thick blonde hair.

“Holy shit,” Sylvain says, in a strangled voice. “I forgot she was in there.”

Dedue sighs and opens his door, and the rest of them spill out, stumbling in the cool night air. Felix scowls when Sylvain wraps an arm around his waist, and Dimitri adjusts his jacket while Ingrid wobbles on her heels, cursing softly.

“Need a hand?” he whispers.

Ingrid grits her teeth and shakes her head. She staggers resolutely onward, and Dimitri takes up the rear with Dedue, trying not to let his feet drag on the sidewalk. By all rights, he should be studying tonight, but there’s something about Claude, with that strange smile and clever hand with the sword. He couldn’t keep his eyes off him in class today, and now that he’s approaching the black iron door of the Abyss, there’s a stirring of anticipation in his chest, a thrill that rushes up his spine and raises the hairs on his arms.

A man with long, shaggy hair and heavy chains wrapped around his chest stands at the door, checking IDs. He stares at Annette’s and Ashe’s for a moment, but doesn’t even bother to card Dimitri. He just smiles at him, wolfish and wicked, and Dimitri sidles past and into the dim heart of the club.

A stairway descends into the dark, wallpapered with posters of garage bands, roller derby sign ups, and what looks unsettlingly like advertisements for an underground wrestling ring. Dimitri’s shoes stick to the steps as he follows the others, and the bass of the music beyond thumps through him, low and ominous.

“Everyone, remember,” Ingrid says, before they reach the barred door at the bottom. “If someone’s hitting on you, give me, Dedue, or Dimitri the signal, and we’ll bail you out.”

“Why the _hell_ would I do _that?_ Sylvain says. He slings his arm around Felix again. “Come on, man, let’s go pick up some girls. Or guys, in your case, I guess.”

“Not interested,” Felix snaps.

“Hey, maybe there’ll be a rare sword in there,” Sylvain says, pushing open the door. “A talking one, all hot and sharp, just for you.”

“He knows he’s gay,” Dedue says, at Dimitri’s side. The others turn to stare at him, and he blinks. “Sylvain. Has no one told him this.”

“Look, that’s, uh.” Ashe swipes a hand through his hair. “That’s a whole thing, Dedue.”

Dedue narrows his eyes slightly, but he says nothing, just follows Dimitri down to the barred door. Annette pushes it open, and the heat of the Abyss sweeps over them.

Dimitri is used to being noticed. It helps when Dedue’s there—Dedue’s so imposing, so naturally poised and sparing with his words, that Dimitri half expects his uncle, who’s warming the throne in his absence, to declare Dedue an unexpected heir and save everyone the trouble. But Dedue drifts for the bar, where Annette is already probably ordering twelve of everything, and Dimitri is left trying to make sense of the chaos.

There’s a cage in the middle of the dance floor. A man is dancing there, his shock of violet hair in his face, tight pants hugging his legs, as a guy with light green hair and a _cape_ leans on the bars with a beer. He says something, and the dancer laughs, reaching through the bars to slide a hand up the other guy’s face. 

At the bar, Sylvain has already gathered a handful of women for shots, and Felix stands off in the shadows, glowering darkly. Dedue gives Dimitri a pointed look and gestures to Sylvain.

_Do you see this,_ he mouths.

_Yes,_ Dimitri mouths back, and Dedue’s face contorts in a gesture of bewildered disbelief. _I know._

“Oh,” Mercedes says, at Dimitri’s side. “Oh, Annette!” She races for Annette, who is halfway through a drink filled with strawberries and ice, and yanks her out of her seat. She drags her to a booth where a young woman with curly blonde hair blinks at them owlishly, dressed in a red miniskirt and a top that looks more like a collection of leather straps tied together. Mercedes pulls both of them into the booth, and since Ingrid is hobbling onto the dance floor, Dimitri is left alone, staring out at the club with the air of a hare surrounded by hawks.

It’s only a matter of time before one of them descends.

“Oh, no,” a familiar voice drawls, and Dimitri closes his eyes for a moment. “It’s the monarchy. Here to see how the serfs take their soma, baby brother?”

Dimitri grits his teeth. Edelgard, his stepmother’s only daughter and the bane of his existence to date, leans on the shoulder of a tall, dark-haired man in pale makeup and heavy eyeliner. She’s in a red velvet dress that she’s probably hacked off herself at the thighs, a black necklace that perfectly matches her lipstick and eyeliner, and black clasps in her hair that clink when she moves. She’s wearing fishnet gloves that are ripped at the fingers, and she somehow manages to look down on Dimitri while still being at least a foot shorter than him. Maybe it’s the heels.

“El,” he says.

She smiles. “Dima. Rare to see you down from your tower.”

“I’m just here with friends, El,” he says. Edelgard squints at him, standing alone at the entrance of the club.

“Uh huh.”

“Look—“ he says. “I’m not. You don’t have to—“

“Oh my gods,” Edelgard says. She unlatches herself from her friend—Hubert, he thinks, he took a math class with him, once—and sighs. “Am I actually going to have to play the sister card? Really? Right now?”

Dimitri remembers, with a flash of horror, the last time Edelgard tried to rescue him from a social engagement. It involved maneuvering the minister of the treasury to trip himself into a fountain, which, admittedly, _was_ kind of worth it, but—

“I’m alright,” he says. Edelgard’s brows lower. “I’m here to, to meet someone, so.”

“You are? Is that _allowed?_ ”

Dimitri shrugs helplessly, and Edelgard groans. 

“Okay,” she says. “If slumming it with the peasants means you aren’t following your uncle’s rules about proper royal protocol, I guess I’m legally obligated to help you rebel properly.”

“I’m not actually rebelling,” Dimitri says, or tries to say, but Edelgard has already grabbed his arm, and he’s dragged across the dance floor, past the man grinding against the cage, past Dedue awkwardly watching _Ashe_ dance with a guy in short shorts that say _Only Sothis Can Judge Me_ , and into the thick of what can only be called a goth dance pit, where the ranks of Edelgard’s well-dressed, heavily-made up followers close around him like a vise.

***

At first, Claude doesn't see the Prince of Faerghus anywhere amidst the revelers in the Abyss. 

The place is crowded already, and his fellow Deer -- what do you call a group of deer, is it a herd? Someone, probably Lysithea, will hit him if he refers to them as a herd -- disperse immediately upon entering. Except for Hilda, bless, who sticks by his side and goes walking around the perimeter of the club with him. 

Claude does see a few familiar faces from his fencing class -- Cheekbones is scowling at Sylvain Gautier, who is in an outfit that screams _someone hang me on a meathook and spank me so I can call you daddy_ , but a little more like he knows it than Ignatz’s. Or maybe not, he seems to be flirting with a lot of women. 

Speaking of, Leonie is chatting up a blonde hipster in a rhinestone flannel, which….all right, then, get it, Leonie. Claude sees Raphael in the corner, likely being mistaken for security, and then he catches sight of Lorenz sidling up to a pink-haired guy in the corner. He glances at Hilda. “Your brother’s here.” 

“Of course he is. Holst is like, so _over_ working for my dad’s campaign, they must get in like, a million fights. Since my dad’s a raging racist and Holst isn’t. Anyway, he comes here to blow off steam.” Hilda sidles up to the bar and flashes a grin at the cute blonde bartender. “Hi! I’d love something sweet and sassy and fruity, and my friend here --” 

“Just tonic and lime,” Claude says, over the music. 

“So, sweet, sassy and fruity for the lady, and...generic and boring for the gentleman?” asks the bartender. 

Hilda laughs. Claude gives an easy shrug and goes for his wallet, but the blonde shakes her corkscrew curls and says, “DD’s drink free.” 

“Well then,” Hilda says, with a truly devious grin as she leans forward. “I should _definitely_ get my drink on the house.” She winks. 

“Designated drivers,” says the bartender, but she smiles. “You’re the third person to make that joke in the last thirty minutes, though.” 

Hilda huffs, but Claude consoles her by opening a tab and telling her to put whatever she wants on it. She hooks her arm in his as they leave the bar with their drinks. “So, whatever your family does in Almyra, I guess they’re good at it.” 

_They haven’t been deposed since the late-middle ages, so, I guess so._ It’s hilariously funny to Claude that Hilda doesn’t know who he is, given her senator father is from the territory closest to the border between Fodlan and Almyra. “Pretty decent, yup. Want to go dance?” Luckily, Hilda likes fun more than politics so it’s easy to distract her. 

As they make their way down to the dance floor, Claude’s eyes fall immediately on a tall young man surrounded by a group of people who are dressed almost identically to Lysithea - so much so that Claude leans in and says to Hilda, “Go tell Lysithea we found her coven.” 

Hilda giggles, and Claude ducks into the throng of dancers and makes his way to where the very out-of-place Dimitri Blaiddyd is standing like a lost little duckling amidst a murder of sleek, well-dressed crows. He makes his way past someone he thinks might _be_ Lysithea, she’s short and has the same pale hair and even that arresting shade of violet for her eyes….but whereas Lysithea’s murderous glares are all earned through Claude’s best efforts, this lady looks like the type who would smile while she killed you with like, some kind of old-school, ceremonial axe that belonged in a museum and somehow ended up on her wall. 

“Hi,” says Claude. “Do you have a sister?” 

A shadow falls. The shadow is a very tall man with gaunt cheekbones, skin so pale it looks like he could be sunburned by a blacklight, and a pair of truly beautiful light-green eyes that are expertly rimmed in what Claude would bet is also very expensive eyeliner. “She does not.” 

“Um.” Claude shrugs. “Sorry, you just -- my dormmate. You look a little like her, is all. But all you Fodlanders kind of look alike, to me.” It’s a completely outrageous thing to say. 

The white-haired girl smiles at him. Claude’s absolutely bisexual and while his type is far-reaching and vast, he’s simultaneously afraid of, and turned on by, this pixie with the bring-along goth butler. “Who _are_ you?” she asks, like maybe she’s queen of the dance floor. 

Well. Claude’s nobility. He bows. “Claude von Riegan. Junior. Poly sci. Golden Deer dorm. From Almyra. I’m a Leo. You?” 

“Edelgard von Hresvelg,” she says, holding a hand out. “Black Eagle dorm. From Enbarr, originally.” Her eyes flicker to the prince, who is still standing and not dancing next to her. “I study anti-imperial literature, political science and women’s studies. And astrology is bullshit.” 

He shakes her hand, then glances up at the still glowering obelisk of doom behind her. “And you are…?” 

“Not interested in making friends,” he says. 

Well, then. The Black Eagles were supposed to be the weird art kids with a lot of money who talked about rejecting morality while painting modern art sculptures, unironically wore beanies and had honest conversations about the social implications of EDM music. 

“Hubert,” Edelgard says, and it takes Claude a moment to realize that’s the guy’s name and not some kind of weird catch-phrase or a curse. “No need for that. Mr. von Riegan’s being perfectly polite. A prince among revelers, you might say.” She smiles. 

Claude’s hackles go up, and alarm bells ring, but he just smiles blandly and says, “I’m pretty great, it’s true,” and that’s when he realizes who she is -- and his smile turns a lot less bland. “Wait, wait. Edelgard von Hresvelg...the ballerina?” 

“Mm,” she says, sipping something, which is a cocktail that he would bet is made out of the blood of her enemies and topped off with the tears of her vanquished rivals. 

Claude claps his hands, utterly delighted. “You once led a protest on the steps of the capitol against using taxes for nobility to go on vacation! While _en garde_! Or whatever you --” He goes up on his toes as best he can, arms raised over his head. 

“ _En pointe_ , is the term. But yes. There were other demands, of course, a fairer wage, trade union recognition, forgiveness of student debt for public servants who aren’t just suckling at the bloated teat of the privileged moneyed elite--” 

“Yeah, yeah!” Claude grins at her. “We gotta talk sometime, I need to know if that story about you protesting church involvement in government affairs by interrupting a holy mass dressed up as chess pieces and staging a one-act play in the nave really happened.” 

Edelgard looks pleased. “Certainly. But at the moment, I promised a dance to one of my classmates. I’m sure I’ll see you later. We’re bound to be in the same classes.” 

“We sure are, princess,” Claude says with a nod, because two can play at that game and she is a princess, whether or not she wants to admit it. On both sides of her family tree -- the birth one (though there’s been no royal family in Enbarr since they were all conveniently disappeared about a hundred years ago) or her adopted one, which if he’s remembering correctly, is also Prince Dimitri’s family. 

Speaking of. Claude bids her farewell and turns to the person he came down here to see in the first place. “Hey, so, you made it.” 

And then, he laughs. 

Dimitri Blaiddyd, future king of Faerghus, is wearing his _rugby jacket_. He looks so out of place that it’s almost adorable, shaggy blond hair and all black clothing and that jacket. He’s also -- well, Claude’s spent his whole life as a crown prince, too, and most of that meant perfecting public smiles and also not showing fear, but mostly it’s about not letting anyone see what you’re not willing to show. 

Maybe no one taught Dimitri that lesson, because he’s looking at Claude like...well. He’s used to being sized up, studied, and he’s even used to people looking at him like they might want to fuck him, but there’s something else going on, here. Dimitri’s summer blue eyes are wide, and he somehow manages to give off the _I want to fuck you_ vibe but the PG version, like maybe he wants to couple-skate with Claude during the slow songs. 

He also looks so happy to see Claude there, though it’s possible he was just embroiled in a horrible discussion about anti-imperialism with his step-sister, who has vocally and publicly decried the aristocracy’s mere existence in Fodlan since she was about sixteen. 

But he doesn’t say that to Dimitri, just smiles and raises his glass. “What are you drinking, can I get you another one?” 

Dimitri blinks at him, and Claude’s not dancing as much as he is moving to the music, just a little, almost instinctively. Dimitri, though, is standing still and ramrod-straight like a support beam holding up a wall, as if moving would cause the structure to topple down on him. 

“I’m not -- no, thank you, I don’t drink,” Dimitri says, so politely. “But I would -- do want another one of - of those? Is it, ah.” He clears his throat, leans in, and actually _whispers_ , “vodka?” the way Claude’s great-aunt on his mother’s side says the word _lesbians_ or _Almyrans_. 

“Tonic and lime,” says Claude holding his drink up. “I don’t drink, either. Want to dance, then?” 

“Oh, I thought -- aren’t we?” 

No. _No._ This cannot be real. There is no way that Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd is gorgeous, tall, wearing a rugby jacket to an industrial dance club, whispering the word _vodka_ as if they’re both not of age, and he thinks dancing is akin to standing stock-still in the middle of a dance floor surrounded by anti-monarchy goth kids. 

Claude puts his hand on his heart and almost swoons. “No, but do you want to?” He has to lean in to shout over the suddenly much-louder dance music, “Pretend we’re fencing.” 

“Well they’d probably ask to leave, Claude,” Dimitri shouts back, leaning closer, and he smells good, like -- something ridiculous, probably, an aftershave named after a tree and a body of water and expensive enough not to smell like a car air freshener.

Claude didn’t get where he is without taking risks - because where he is, it _is_ a risk, especially if Edelgard knows who he is -- so he moves in, puts his arm around Dimitri’s neck and his other hand on his hip, and gives him a little push. “I just meant you should, you know. Move around. Dance.” He edges a little closer, grinning up at him. 

Dimitri sort of does it, sways with the music but yet without moving his hips, which Claude might think was a sign he didn’t want Claude close to him if Dimitri didn’t have one hand -- one big, broad hand -- low on his back. “I’m afraid I’m used to other kinds of dancing.” 

“Pretty sure you gotta move to do those fancy ones, too,” Claude says, charmed and utterly determined to drag Dimitri somewhere, push him up against a wall, kiss him and possibly climb him like a tree. 

There’s a bit of a commotion next to him, and Claude sees the security guy from earlier approaching one of the goth kids -- he doesn’t give it much thought until he realizes that it’s actually one of _his_ goth kids, in that it’s not a Black Eagle, it’s Lysithea. She looks so mad when the guard gently leads her away, like he’s the sun and she’s a vampire being turned to ash by his mere presence. 

“It’s a _Shirley Fucking Temple_ , you moron!” Lysithea yells. “With extra fucking syrup and cherries! I don’t drink, I just come here for the _atmosphere_...Let _go_ of my _arm_ or I will _curse_ you, I’m not the kind of witch that gives a shit about the three-fold law! Claude! Get over here!” 

Claude, who was just getting Dimitri to move his hips more than once per beat, sighs. “How are you with rescue missions?” 

“I would venture to say, better than I am at modern dance,” Dimitri says, turning to follow as Claude quickly pushes his way to where the guard is dragging a furious Lysithea out of the bar. 

_He just called grinding at a club ‘modern dance’. Wait until I tell Hilda._

Hilda is talking to a very earnest young woman with pale-blue hair who looks about as out of place as Dimitri in his rugby jacket and keeps glancing at the door like she wants to flee. Hilda is gesturing wildly and smiling, though, and Claude can only deal with one trauma at a time. 

Leonie is at least making out against a far-off wall with the hipster in the rhinestone flannel, so, good job, Leonie. There’s no sign of Raphael or Ignatz, but there aren’t any meathooks that Claude can see, so he imagines they gave up and went for pizza. Or to get Ignatz an actual shirt. 

“Hey, it’s okay, she’s with me,” Claude says, finally reaching the shirtless guy in chains and okay, that’s a...look, isn’t it? He puts on his most winning smile. “She’s not drinking any alcohol, she’s just here to dance.” 

“I don’t know who you are, pal,” says the guy. “Don’t care, either. And that’s not how it works. She’s gotta be 21.” 

Claude is unwilling to begin this year by having one of his faves lose their fake ID on day _one_. First, it’s terrible form and embarrassing. Second, Lysithea will curse him. Third, she’ll spend every Friday night studying and never have any fun. Claude can’t allow any of this to happen, so….

Lysithea looks so mad, and Claude does understand; she’s the youngest student in the dorms, having skipped a grade or two and starting college at seventeen, instead of nineteen like everyone else. It was probably easier before everyone became of age, because now the people she knew were out at clubs that wouldn’t let her in.

“This club sucks anyway,” Lysithea says, tossing her hair. “Your bartender didn’t even _know_ how to make a Shirley Temple.” 

“What the fuck is a Shirley Temple?” asks the bouncer. 

“That’s my _fucking_ point,” Lysithea hisses at him. Her resemblance to a kitten is too strong. Claude has to look away. 

“Perhaps,” Dimitri starts, and Claude feels a moment of panic before Lysithea, who hates drawing attention to her age more than probably leaving, throws up her hands and cuts him off. 

“Whatever, I have better things to do,” she huffs, and heads for the door. 

“I -- do you mind if I just --” Claude gestures at her retreating form. 

“No, no, of course not, I’ll come with you,” says Dimitri. “We need to make sure the young lady gets home safely.” 

Claude cannot believe he’s a real person, but he smiles in genuine gratitude and says, “Thanks. She’s a firecracker, but I feel kinda like I should keep an eye out on her. Part of the herd. Uh, ‘cause...deer? Anyway.” 

They go outside, and Lysithea is pulling her phone out of her coffin shaped purse -- it’s got a Sailor Moon case, because of course it does. 

“I can get you another ID,” Claude says, because making wild promises never comes back to haunt him. Nope. 

“He didn’t take it. He just said I had to go.” Her bright eyes settle on Dimitri. “You’re the king.” 

Dimitri sighs, just a little, his shoulders going stiff and his smile a bit brittle. “Not quite yet.” 

“Well. When you are? Change these fucking draconian drinking rules. It’s stupid. I don’t want to get wasted like that red-head doing body shots off girls at the bar --” 

“Ah,” says Dimitri, wincing. 

“But I just want to go dance with my friends, it’s dumb, so fix it,” she demands. “Claude, I’m fine, I know how to get a Fast Travel Cab home, you know.” 

“Okay, geez,” he says, holding his hands up. “I’m just trying to be a…” He puts them on top of his head, wiggling his fingers. 

“Don’t,” she says, but her lips twitch. 

“A _deer_ friend,” Claude finishes, and she groans, but there’s a laugh in there somewhere. 

Lysithea’s Fast Travel Cab shows up, and before she leaves she gives Claude the lightest punch on the arm and a small smile when he responds by pretending to stagger backward. 

“You’ve known her a while, then?” Dimitri asks, once the cab pulls away. Claude isn’t in a hurry to go back inside; Dimitri’s got one of those low, deep chest voices that are hard to hear over loud music. Claude doesn’t want to leave because that’s the plan he, himself, instigated, but he and Dimitri can surely go somewhere more...private...to talk, right?

“Just since we moved in, why?” Claude asks, subtly directing them toward the alley instead of the door to the club. 

“Oh. It’s just -- well, I’ve known my dormmates for practically my whole life, with a few exceptions. The, ah, one who’s dressed like a depressed ghost bride.” 

Claude leans forward. “Dimitri. _Is_ she?” 

“I - no, she seems rather happy,” Dimitri responds, so deadpan that Claude has no honest idea if that were a joke or not. Probably it wasn’t. Which makes it somehow better. “You’re lucky you -- ah.” 

Claude, who is trying to figure out how to push Dimitri against a wall and kiss him, startles when they turn into an alley and see Edelgard out there...hastily pushing a familiar, pink-haired girl into the club via the alley entrance and slamming it shut. 

“What?” she demands. “I’m having a cigarette.” 

Dimitri sighs. Claude expects him to say something like _then why aren’t you smoking_ , but all he says is, “I wish you wouldn’t, it’s very bad for your health and you know your mother worries.” 

Edelgard says something, but Claude’s too busy putting something together to bother listening. Hilda’s remark about her ex, an angry ex-ballerina. That was, of course, Hilda who Edelgard just shoved in the door. _Hilda’s ex is Edelgard_. 

Claude smiles with pure pleasure at ferreting out this secret of Hilda’s. “You didn’t mention you knew Hilda,” he says, to Edelgard. 

“I don’t,” she says coolly, and goes in the _employees and service deliveries only_ door like the queen she’d probably put in a guillotine. 

“Your sister,” Claude says. 

“Step-sister. We...don’t always...get along,” says Dimitri, carefully. “Should we go back inside? Perhaps through the front door, as neither of us have any deliveries nor are we employees of the club. They probably don’t want us to use this door.” 

Charmed, Claude moves in closer, going for the kill. Or the kiss. Better analogy. “Maybe you could use a few more dancing lessons, first.” He inserts himself right in Dimitri’s space, arms around his neck, and presses in close to that tall, gorgeous body. 

“I don’t hear any music,” says Dimitri. 

“Just wait,” says Claude, and kisses him. 

***

It strikes Dimitri, somewhere between Claude hauling himself up Dimitri’s body like a human pull-up bar and the taste of lime on his tongue, that the music is probably meant to be metaphorical.

In Dimitri’s admittedly limited experience, he’s used to kisses being slow, careful things, light and soft and maybe a little too wet, but there’s nothing subtle about Claude. His muscular arms tense as he holds himself up by Dimitri’s shoulders and presses Dimitri’s head back against the brick. He takes Dimitri’s lower lip in his teeth, and when Dimitri reaches down to grab Claude’s ass, practically holding him up one-handed, Claude makes a delighted sound against Dimitri’s mouth and tilts his head to bite down _hard_ just below the collar of his rugby jacket. Dimitri gasps, cock twitching, and Claude smiles wickedly in the dark.

“Have to admit,” Dimitri says, as Claude releases his neck to slide his hands under Dimitri’s shirt, “I wasn’t, ah, expecting this—“

“Dimitri, it’s a nightclub. Honestly, I’m surprised we’re the only ones out here. Holy shit, your abs.”

Dimitri doesn’t exactly see the appeal, but he nevertheless enjoys the eager way Claude rucks up his shirt, the gentle scrape of his nails, the appreciative sound he makes when he cups Dimitri’s chest. He kisses him again, hard and insistent, and Dimitri lets himself drift in the sensation, in the heat of Claude pressed against him, the way he shifts when Dimitri numbly gropes his ass and thighs. This is everything a proper prince of Faerghus shouldn’t do, and the terror of it is drowned out by a heady exhilaration.

He hefts Claude in his hands a bit, which makes Claude’s breath hitch in an intriguing way, and backs them into the cool stone of the opposite wall. He bends over Claude to kiss him properly, and Claude grins wide, rakes his hands through Dimitri’s hair, feels down the taut muscle of his back and just brushes the belt of Dimitri’s pants with his fingertips. 

“Yeah,” Claude says, as Dimitri finally lets his hands wander, sliding under the leather miniskirt. He’s growing a slight beard along his jawline—not a neckbeard, thank gods, but the stubble scrapes at Dimitri’s lips. “Look at you, Dimitri, I just want to take you home and rip that jacket off you and—ah—“ His voice breaks as Dimitri, clumsy as ever, rips the fishnets under his fingers. They tear slowly, stretching over Claude’s bare ass, and Claude gives Dimitri a look that makes Dimitri’s mouth go dry.

“You’re fucking me after this,” he says, in a low voice.

“Yes,” Dimitri manages, and he can feel a laugh rumbling in Claude’s throat as he surges up to kiss him again. “I can—pay for the—“

“Don’t, it’s hot,” Claude says, and Dimitri rips the fishnets a little wider. Claude moans into his mouth and grabs his wrist. He brings Dimitri’s hand around to the front of his briefs, holds him just over the fabric. “Feel how hard I am for you.”

Dimitri tentatively presses down over the thick, hard shape of Claude’s cock under the briefs and ragged fishnets, and Claude grinds up into his palm. Dimitri’s own cock _throbs,_ and he wonders, for just a split second, what the risk would be if he were to get to his knees in this dim back alley and flip Claude’s miniskirt up and over his hips.

From the look in Claude’s green, blown-out eyes, he’s more than half expecting it.

Then Claude’s hand clenches in Dimitri’s hair, and he drags Dimitri down so that his lips are pressed to the velvet choker on Claude’s neck.

“Look,” he whispers. Dimitri follows his gaze, and his hands clench on Claude’s thighs. There are people in the shadows further down the alley, someone with long, pale yellow hair—Oh, hells, not _Mercie_ —and the man he’d seen dancing near the cage, the one with fashionable green hair and a questionable cape. Except whoever the green-haired man is kneeling on the damp concrete for is wearing pants, not a gown, and their profile against a distant exit sign isn’t quite right. Not Mercedes, then. Dimitri lets out a breath of relief.

“Maybe we should take this somewhere else,” Claude whispers, and Dimitri thinks of his bed back at the dorm, perfectly made and hardly big enough for Dimitri, let alone both of them. Maybe he can text Dedue, ask him for a few hours alone. Maybe they can—Dimitri’s skin prickles at the thought, entirely selfish and impossible—maybe they can use the car…

“For fuck’s sake.”

Dimitri’s shoulders stiffen. Edelgard is standing half out of the service door, which she really shouldn’t be using, flapping a hand behind her at what is probably either Hubert or one of her latest in a string of starry-eyed hopefuls. In the alley, the man in the cape carefully rises to his feet.

“Look,” Edelgard says, “I appreciate you sticking it to the monarchy—“ Claude snorts, and Edelgard raises an eyebrow. “But can’t you do it somewhere else? Like, I don’t know, some royal hunting lodge your father took from a national forest or something?”

“You have a hunting lodge?” Claude asks. He wraps his arms around Dimitri again, casually hanging off him. 

“Technically, we have four,” Dimitri says. Edelgard makes a strangled sound of disgust. She steps away from the door, and a shadow flickers behind her. “But they aren’t on park property. We were just about to leave, El.”

“Good, because I really do need a smoke,” Edelgard says. She steps out into the cool night air and digs in her cleavage for a battered paper box. Her painted nails flash dark as blood, and when she whips out a lighter, something else flickers behind the fire. A mask, a twisted green face like the ones people wear in the capital on the spring solstice, dappled with wooden leaves and the tangle of tree bark. If there are eyes behind the slots in the mask, Dimitri can’t see them, but he can see the hood fitted over the mask well enough, and the knife gleaming in a gloved fist. 

Edelgard curses as her lighter goes skittering across the concrete, and the masked figure grabs her round the waist, knife pressed just above her collarbone. They kick the service door shut, and Dimitri goes cold and still, focused on the fingers flexing on the hilt of the knife.

“Okay,” they say. Their voice is muffled behind the mask. “I’m gonna need you to empty your pockets.”

“You’re kidding me,” Edelgard says. The knife presses closer to her neck, and Dimitri rocks forward on his heels.

“Wait, are we being mugged?” Claude asks. “Really?”

“Apparently,” Edelgard says. She doesn’t look very concerned, just mildly more irritated than she had been when she saw Dimitri and Claude. 

“Take off your jewelry,” the masked person says. Edelgard sighs and twists her bracelet, as though testing the give of the silver. “Hand over your phones. Your rings.”

Dimitri clenches his hand around the signet ring his father had left him, which he wore on a chain before he was old enough to fit it on his forefinger, and Claude shoots him a dark, unreadable look.

“Okay,” Claude says. He keeps flicking his gaze to the alley, but Dimitri can’t seem to focus on anything other than the knife at Edelgard’s neck. He knows she has to have one of her own—He _gave_ her one, back when they weren’t even step-siblings yet, and she was just a quiet, wide-eyed girl at the steps of his father’s ballroom. “Alright, I’m taking out my phone.”

“Edelgard,” Dimitri says.

“Shut up, Dimitri, don’t try anything,” Edelgard snaps, but she’s already lifting her heel. He tries to suppress a smile—Edelgard doesn’t need a knife, not with heels sharp enough to cut glass—and lurches forward as the masked figure crumples to the side, knife clattering at Edelgard’s feet. Edelgard picks it up, quick as a flash, but the green-haired man from the alley has already dragged her attacker back, thrown him into the wall, and slammed a fist in his stomach. He rips off the mask, and when the attacker covers their face with both hands, he wrenches their hands away and punches them full in the jaw. They go down, hood falling over their eyes, and the green-haired man rolls them to their back with his boot.

Dimitri holds his breath. The man had done it all so quickly, so _coldly,_ with no sign of emotion in his distant, glassy eyes. Even now, he doesn’t speak. His expression remains carefully neutral, and when he glances up to look at each of them in turn, Dimitri feels something primal shift in the back of his mind, the skittering fear of all small creatures in the sights of a hunter.

“Damn,” Claude says. “You alright, princess?”

Edelgard looks at Claude. For a moment, there seemed to be something of Dimitri’s own thoughts in her gaze, but now she has a new target, and she’s back to her familiar look of polite disinterest. “He could have given me a minute to smoke, at least.”

“El, I’m so sorry,” Dimitri starts to say, but Claude is already ducking down to pick up Edelgard’s lighter. He flicks it open for her, and when she takes out one of her clove cigarettes, her fingers don’t even tremble. As Edelgard leans in to the flame, they all turn to their unlikely rescuer, who adjusts his cape and stares down at the mugger.

“Ah, allow me to thank you,” Dimitri says. He steps forward, hand raised. The man stares at him for a moment, like an alien creature witnessing human behavior for the first time, then takes his hand. “That was my—“

“Don’t say it,” Edelgard says.

“Step-sister,” Dimitri finishes, and Edelgard rolls her eyes. “I don’t know what I would have done if she’d been hurt.”

“He _is_ real, right?” Claude whispers.

“Yeah, say hello to Prince Charming,” Edelgard says, and takes a drag. 

“My name is Dimitri,” he says, determined to do this right regardless. “I am in your debt.”

“Byleth,” the man says. He drops his hand and turns his cold gaze to Edelgard. “Must’ve followed you out.”

“Probably,” she drawls. She regards Byleth closely, lingering on the man still collapsed at his feet. “Those were some pretty moves. What are you? A bouncer?”

Byleth opens his mouth, but it’s the man in the alley behind him who responds, in a low, oddly familiar voice.

“A mercenary, in fact.” Professor Jeritza steps into the light, and Dimitri feels a blush crawl up his neck. Oh, _gods,_ he just saw his _professor_ making love to a man in an _alley._ He will never look at a fencing foil the same way again. And since when are mercenaries still necessary? Who hires a mercenary this close to the border of countries at peace with each other?

Professor Jeritza turns the mugger’s cheek with his foot. “I’ve seen him before. A student.”

“Really?” Claude crouches to his feet at the mugger’s side. He pulls back the hood and digs in the robe, and Edelgard shifts slightly, as though she’s about to step forward. Claude lifts the mask over his face for a moment, and Dimitri shudders—It makes him look fey, a creature from the wilds wearing a human man’s skin. He lets it fall. “You’d think someone would have seen him, back there.”

“I don’t really care where he came from,” Edelgard says. It comes out a little too fast, in a breathy rush, and Dimitri frowns. Maybe it’s affecting her more than she’s letting on. “Let’s leave him for the cops and go home.”

“Pretty sure we’ll have to talk to them, too,” Claude says. “That’s how it works here, right?”

Edelgard breathes out smoke and crosses her arms tight over her chest. “I don’t feel like talking.”

Claude glances at her sharply, but Professor Jeritza just shrugs a shoulder. “I can see to the authorities.”

“And I’ll walk you home,” Byleth says. 

Dimitri tries to protest, but Edelgard silences him with a look. “I’d like that,” she says. “Let me text my people.”

“Yeah,” Claude says, and pulls out his phone. Dimitri fumbles with his, but as he types out a quick message to Dedue, he spots Claude with his phone over the mugger’s mask, pressing a button on the screen. He pulls it back and stands, fingers flying over the phone. “Yeah, let’s go. You live here?”

“Yes,” Byleth says. He steps around the mugger and starts off towards the street, cape flowing behind him in a low breeze. “Staff apartments, down the hill.”

“Thought you were a mercenary,” Claude says. He sidles up next to Dimitri and places a hand on his back, under the rugby jacket. It’s warm. Steadying. Dimitri slowly remembers how to breathe.

“I am,” Byleth says. “Was. I’m on break.”

“And you and, uh, Professor Jeritza?” Claude asks. Edelgard isn’t looking, but Dimitri can tell by the way she holds her cigarette to her lips, not even inhaling, that she’s paying attention.

Byleth shrugs. That’s all. Just shrugs. “He’s good with a sword.”

Claude chokes, and Dimitri slaps him on the back. “Uh huh. So what was that mask about?” Claude asks, when he can talk again. “Edelgard, you didn’t see anything on your way out? Who were you gesturing to, before you—“

“Let’s just enjoy not being mugged for five seconds, please,” Edelgard says. She takes another drag, and Claude frowns slightly, but thankfully doesn’t push it. Edelgard’s resilient, Dimitri knows this, but anyone would be shaken by a knife at their neck. He keeps glancing over at her, even when Claude runs a hand up his back and traces over his spine, and when they reach the road leading to the Golden Deer dorm, Dimitri almost stumbles over Claude.

“This is my stop,” Claude says. He gives Dimitri a look that makes Dimitri think of fishnets ripping under his fingers, and Dimitri eyes the leather skirt hitched up Claude’s thighs. “Unless you want to come up? Pretty sure my roommate’s not in.”

Dimitri wants to. He does. He places his hands on Claude’s thighs, lets his fingers tease up the hem of that skirt, hears the anticipatory hitch of his own breath.

“I can’t,” he says. “I need to make sure El gets home safe.”

“Didn’t say that when I got arrested at the national library,” Edelgard says.

“Painting the steps is vandalism, El,” he says. Edelgard whispers something in her mother’s home tongue and grinds out the stub of her cigarette.

“Maybe next time,” Dimitri says, and Claude smiles.

“Sure,” he says. “Next time, no masked attackers. Just you and me.” He pulls Dimitri in for a kiss by the lapels of his jacket, and Dimitri buries his fingers in Claude’s hair, just for a moment. When he pulls away, Claude’s smile is sharp as a knife. “And you’ll be able to rip the rest of this off of me properly,” he adds.

It takes a moment for Dimitri to find his voice. “Right,” he croaks. “Of course.”

Claude steps back, still smiling, and makes a sweeping bow that has Edelgard muttering and Dimitri’s stomach twisting. Then he straightens, silhouetted by the light of the front doors of the Golden Deer dormitory, and turns on his heel for home.


	2. Chapter 2

Felix takes another glass of water, sets his teeth, and tries to tell himself that fucking off and leaving a drunk and stumbling Sylvain isn’t going to make him feel guilty in the morning. 

It will. It has before. And he knows it, and he already knows that Dimitri, damn him, has wandered off somewhere. Dimitri and Dedue are the only ones other than Felix who can snap Sylvain out of it when he gets to this point, and as much as Felix hates to admit it, he doesn’t relish the thought of doing this alone.

“Never have I ever,” Sylvain says, with his back on a sophomore nursing student’s chest and his legs sprawled over a chair, “never have I…”

“Oh my gods, Sylvain,” the woman says, pushing at his head, which is lolling back on her shoulder. Sylvain laughs faintly, and Felix sits up—He can hear the edge to that laughter, the dark mood creeping around the edges of Sylvain’s voice.

“Never have I ever,” he says, and he looks up at her, his eyes gone cold. “Met a girl who didn’t have a price ta—“

“Okay, we’re done,” Felix says. Sylvain blinks slowly, and the woman makes a half-hearted protest, but Felix already has an arm wrapped around one of Sylvain’s. He drags him upright, and Sylvain stumbles against him.

“Oh,” Sylvain says. “The vodka just hit me.”

“Your last drink was rum,” Felix says. “But sure. We’re going home before someone _really_ hits you.”

Sylvain laughs darkly. “Story of my life. Let’s bring Danelle back with us. She can do this thing with her tongue. She showed me.”

“Good for her.” Felix hauls Sylvain up on a shoulder when he staggers to the side, and Sylvain leans on him, hair brushing Felix’s cheek. 

“I can also do a thing with my tongue,” Sylvain says. Felix sends a silent prayer to whatever god or convenient demon might be listening and drags them past the bar. A group of students watch them go, and one of them pulls a face.

“Look. There’s one of the Gautiers,” he says.

“Which one?” asks a girl.

“The man-whore,” another one says, and the laughter cuts across Felix, cold and hard. “Fio says if his daddy didn’t keep shelling out shit to the college, he’d probably be fucking his way into grad school.”

“Who says he isn’t anyways?” 

Felix clenches his hand in the back of Sylvain’s jacket, but Sylvain just smiles, sloppy-drunk and already half asleep on his arm.

“‘S fine,” he says. “Not like it isn’t true.”

“It _isn’t,_ ” Felix says, a little too loudly, and one of the people at the bar blushes pink and looks down. Right. 

Felix’s phone hums insistently in his back pocket as they navigate the stairs—Sylvain has to sit down twice, laughing to himself—but he doesn’t have time to check, not when Sylvain chooses to stagger off into the convenient bushes by the door to throw up most of his hard-earned work. Felix sighs and stands there, arms crossed, as Sylvain retches and laughs wetly at his feet.

“Oh man, I’m so trashed,” he moans, and grabs Felix by the legs. “Felix, help me out. We need to like, take this party to the dorm—“

“No parties,” Felix says. “House rule.”

“I _bought_ half that dorm,” Sylvain says. He tries to swagger upright, and grabs Felix by the ass for balance. “You’re unfair, Felix.”

Felix just groans and pulls out his phone. There’s a text from Dedue, which he summarily ignores in favor of pulling up the Fast Travel app. He _tries_ to ignore Sylvain, but that’s like trying to ignore a flock of geese in a convenience store, and after Sylvain starts making dramatic whimpering noises and moaning, _Just one party, Felix, come on, Felix, don’t you love me, Felix,_ he shoves his hand in Sylvain’s face.

Sylvain stands there, too drunk to move, smiling into Felix’s palm.

“You’re a disaster,” Felix says.

“How well you know me.”

Getting Sylvain into the cab is like maneuvering a bag of pudding, but he just about does it, and Felix sits ramrod straight while Sylvain squirms around in the backseat, his shorts hiked up his thighs, eyes half-lidded, hair mussed. Somehow, he manages to look attractive even when he’s facedown in the back of a cab with half his ass showing and his legs flopping around, which only proves that the universe is potently skewed out of Felix’s favor. Sylvain shouldn’t _be_ attractive. He just called a perfectly respectable woman a gold-digger and threw up outside the Abyss. He’s been actively sabotaging his own life for the past seven years. He calls Felix _sweet,_ unironically.

“Felix,” Sylvain says, when the cab pulls up on the curb. His voice is low, like he’s already mostly asleep. “Dedue says Dimitri got mugged.”

“What?” Felix scrambles for his phone. Sylvain oozes out of the cab, but Felix is too busy scrolling through a frantic group text to notice, so Sylvain hits the street with a dull smack. He grunts and rolls to his hands and knees.

“Gotta save Dimitri,” he says. “Gotta go back. Make sure he’s ok. He’s such a little guy.”

“He’s taller than we are,” Felix says. He strides around the car to yank Sylvain up. “And Dedue says he’s fine. He’s home. The guy didn’t touch him.”

“Don’t cry, Felix,” Sylvain says. He touches Felix’s face. “He’ll be okay. Gotta get him. See how he’s. If he’s. I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“Yeah, alright,” Felix says. He holds Sylvain’s head against his shoulder and practically drags him across the parking lot.

“Have to, now,” Sylvain says. His voice is softer, barely audible. “Glenn was better at this.”

Felix stiffens, takes a breath, and slides his keycard through the door lock. His brother probably _would_ be better at this. Glenn wouldn’t have let Sylvain get to this point at all. He would have talked to Dimitri more, said the right things, maybe convinced Felix’s dad to take Sylvain in, back when things were rough and Felix and Dimitri didn’t know how to handle it. And Felix wouldn’t have to grow into his place, slipping into the role of an heir like someone trying to walk in shoes three sizes too big, stumbling every other step.

“Sorry,” Sylvain whispers.

“You’re fine.” Felix guides them into the lobby. The Blue Lions building isn’t really a dorm—It’s more like a massive house, split up into several apartments on every floor, and Felix, Sylvain, Ingrid and Dimitri had pitched in for most of it. It has a state of the art kitchen, which Ashe and Dedue have taken over, a makeshift gym, and signs of the Blaiddyd line fucking everywhere. Felix stalks by a statue of a rearing lion and stares up at the steps leading to the second floor.

“Dimitri!” he shouts. “I need a pack mule.”

“Sorry?” Footsteps thump down the stairs, and Dimitri appears, looking oddly disheveled and out of breath. His hair is a mess, his pants have been buttoned wrong, and his feet are bare. His brows lower, and he lets out a disappointed sigh. “Oh. I see. I’ll take one side.”

“Dima,” Sylvain says, as Dimitri thunders down the stairs. “You’re okay. No one hurt you.”

“I’m alright, thank you for the concern,” Dimitri says. “You really shouldn’t drink so much, Sylvain.”

“Okay, dad,” Sylvain says. Dimitri shoots Felix a look. “You need to lighten up. Have some fun. You can’t be pure as the driven snow forever, Dimitri, the crown doesn’t disintegrate if you let loose a little.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dimitri says. As he helps pull Sylvain up the stairs, Felix looks Dimitri over. He doesn’t seem all too shaken, but it’s hard to tell, sometimes. After—after Dimitri’s father died, out in Duscur, Dimitri’s been very _careful_. He’s always been easy to read, but there’s something deeper there, Felix thinks. Something darker, held down by Dimitri’s will alone. 

“You two are so bossy,” Sylvain says, when he’s deposited into his massive, sprawling bedroom. He rolls onto his bed and blinks up at them. “Felix, you have really nice eyes.”

“Thanks.” Felix shoves at Sylvain’s face again, and Sylvain chuckles to himself. “Dimitri. I assume you weren’t hurt.”

“No one was hurt, thankfully,” Dimitri says. “Or robbed.” He walks with Felix to Sylvain’s door. His face is still slightly flushed, and he hooks his thumbs in his pants pockets. “Felix. Do you remember that fellow in our fencing cl—“

A thump shakes the walls, and Felix turns to find Sylvain on the floor, his leather shorts slung low on his hips. Sylvain laughs into the rug and turns to look up at them.

“Felix,” he says. “Felix, I can’t take off my shorts. They’re stuck to me. Oh my gods, I’ll never feel my balls again, they’re shrink-wrapped in leather…”

“I can’t believe you,” Felix says. Sylvain laughs again.

“Do you…” Dimitri glances sidelong at Sylvain. “Do you need assistance?”

“Yes,” Sylvain says.

“No.” Felix places a hand on Dimitri’s chest, backing him out of the room. “I’ve got this.”

“If you’re sure,” Dimitri says, dubiously.

Felix looks at Sylvain, with his back arched and his ass in the air, struggling to wrench down his shorts, and back at Dimitri.

“Yeah,” he says. “Unfortunately, I am.”

He closes the door behind him and runs a hand over his face.

“There’s probably something wrong with me,” he says, and turns to help cut a severely trashed Sylvain Gautier out of his woefully tight leather shorts.

***

***  
Claude isn’t hung-over, but he’s _something_ as he drags himself to his history class and maybe it’s the mental equivalent of a hangover because...yeah. Wow. 

Last year, in Almyra, things were definitely not this intense the first week of school. Fodlan making good on that whole thing where everything that happens here, _happens_. You don’t just go to a dance club and make out with a guy. You go to a dance club, make out with a _prince_ and then almost get mugged, along with the prince’s anarchist step-sister who is maybe dating your BFF and then you get saved by your fencing teacher’s mercenary hook-up who was blowing him in the alley. 

The worst part of all of that was the part where Claude went home alone and turned on with nothing but killer eyeliner and ripped up fishnets. Luckily, Lorenz sent him the _heading home w/someone do not fuck dimitri blaiddyd in my bed pls_ text, so Claude could at least see to his frustrations in private when he got home. He also waited for the cops to call, because he couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t want to know what he saw since he was literally involved in the almost-mugging along with the prince and -- was Edelgard a princess? He wasn’t sure how it worked, when your mom married into the royal family. 

But the cops hadn’t called, not while he was fantasizing about Dimitri and how that would have gone if no one interrupted them, nor when he was in the shower after, or even when he’d put all his club clothes away and climbed in bed in loose sweatpants and his hair tied back out of his face. 

No messages from the police, but along with his convo with Hilda -- who did not mention Edelgard, interesting -- Claude did have a very serious message from Dimitri ensuring he’d arrived home safely and then thanking him for a lovely evening and the alley-makeout -- at least that’s what Claude assumed _last night was nice_ meant, since Dimitri could not have meant the mugging. It was, in fact, followed immediately by a message that said, _of course, not counting the mugging_. 

Claude sort of laughed helplessly and went to sleep, after not letting himself text Dimitri about the filthy fantasy he’d indulged in and gotten off to before his shower. 

Lorenz staggered in on Claude’s way out, red-faced and his hair -- in one of those fashionable, edgy haircuts that only people who looked like a wealthy, tall fashion model could pull off -- a bit mussed. “Do not say anything, I slept on his couch.” 

Claude did not say anything, because he didn’t believe it for a second. Hilda told him all about Lorenz’s crush on her older brother, how she thought he’d initially tried to hook up with him to get the edge on a political internship then went _oh no, he’s hot_ and now maybe caught feelings. According to Hilda, Holst was fueled by caffeine, a diet supplement that was ninety-four percent caffeine and six percent something unregulated that was basically caffeine times seventy, family competitiveness and a desire to oust their racist father from the inside by working for him and then stealing his job. 

Claude wasn’t entirely sure Hilda knew how politics worked, which considering she was a junior poly-sci major, was slightly concerning. 

Now, though, he’s walking through the chilly autumn air toward his history class in the Sothis Memorial Building. It’s Medieval Fodlan History, and Claude is already wondering if he’s going to have to skip class the day they talk about Almyran and Fodlan relations before his great-great-whatever grandfather, King Khalid -- his namesake, in fact -- brokered peace between the two nations that had endured to this day. Before that, it’d been a lot of border skirmishes and racism. At least the border skirmishes were gone. 

“Hi!” A young woman appears next to him, wearing a hoodie with rainbows and a pair of cat ears on the hood. Claude wants one immediately. She beams at him, all big blue eyes, and says, “I saw you at the Abyss last night. Claude, right? I’m Annette.” 

“Hi, yeah, that was me. Surprised you recognized me without all the fishnet.” Claude smiles easily at her. “I’m insanely jealous of that hoodie.” 

“Oh! I got it online, um, I think it was called Chromatic Universe? Cute, right?” She seems pleased, and it’s the smile and the big eyes that make him place her as one of Dimitri’s friends. 

“You’re a Blue Lion?” 

She nods. “Yup! Anyway, Prince -- er, Dimitri mentioned what happened and I’m so glad you guys were okay! That’s so scary. I’m glad no one was hurt!” She fumbles through the truly ridiculous stack of books she’s carrying -- in addition to a jammed-full backpack that’s almost as big as she is -- and hands him a flyer. “I thought maybe you’d want to join!” 

He takes the flier and smiles at it. “Pegasus Club?” 

“Yeah! It’s the queer kid club,” she says with a grin. Then she goes a little pink. “Oh, not to uh. Just because you were in a skirt! I don’t. And I didn’t hear anything about what you were doing with -- oh, no.” 

Claude takes pity on her. “I’m bi, it’s great and I’m cool with it, when is this, I’ll be there, I’ll even bring cupcakes. And my bestie, another disaster bi, and maybe my gay roommate, because I’ll need someone to carry the cupcakes.” 

“Oh! Is that, um.” She wrinkles up her nose. She’s super cute. “A....euphemism?” 

“What.” Claude laughs out loud. “I’m sorry you’re the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” She’s like Lysithea’s good twin. Sort of. “Um, no, but can we make it one?” 

She blushes adorably - of course - and says, “We sure can! I gotta get to my voice lessons but please bring anyone you want to the meeting! And the cupcakes. Definitely bring those or I’ll be mad!” 

“And then I think the world would fold in on itself,” Claude says with a smile, and bids her farewell while imagining Dimitri in one of those hoodies. He continues on, bemoaning the lack of cat ears and rainbows on his own collegiate-branded sweatshirt, and finally arrives at the building for his class. It’s at least open today. Claude wonders why it was closed, but he quickly forgets that as he sees a familiar snow-haired figure out smoking by the entrance. 

He nods at her as he makes his way up the steps. “Hey. You here for class?” 

“It’s a college, isn’t that the point?” Edelgard grinds the cigarette out beneath the heel of her shoe. She’s in a pair of boots without the death-heel, this time, but she’s still smartly dressed and, low and behold, that thing Claude mistook for a shadow is actually her friend Hubert...who looks the same as he did at the club, just without the makeup. He really does have gorgeous eyes. Claude doesn’t think he’d appreciate the sentiment, though. 

“Yeah, so they tell me.” He nods at her. “You okay?” 

“I don’t need my baby brother checking up on me, and I don’t need the boy who was trying to fuck him in an alley doing it, either.” 

“I wasn’t trying to _fuck_ him in the alley,” Claude says. He likes her, he decides. Probably he shouldn’t, she’s like, trouble with every letter a capital and followed by an exclamation mark, but he can’t help it. The fact she _and_ Hilda are pretending they don’t know each other? Too delicious to let that go. “Just making out. Maybe you’re familiar?” 

Edelgard stares at him. “I’m fine. To answer your question.” 

“Did you talk to the --” 

“I don’t want to be late,” says Edelgard, cutting him off and heading toward the stairs. Hubert drifts after her like a grim ghost, and Claude follows because he doesn’t really want to be late, either. 

Claude heads into the room for his class. Sothis Memorial Hall is one of the oldest buildings on Garreg Mach’s campus, and the classroom itself is huge -- instead of individual desks there are long tables, and there’s even a _fireplace_ because apparently even the Goddess knew this place was a frozen wasteland in the winter.  
Claude’s never been shy about sitting in the front, which is a good thing because tarrying with both Annette and Edelgard made it so the only spots available are up near the professor. Who isn’t here yet, but someone _else_ is -- a familiar blond head, and a familiar rugby jacket stretched over a familiar set of broad shoulders. 

Claude catches a glance of Cheekbones -- his name is Felix, Claude remembers -- sitting and scowling next to what Claude assumes is Sylvain Gautier, who’s mostly a pile of crossed arms and messy red hair atop of it. Next to him is the girl Claude saw in a bridal gown at the club, dressed in typical college student clothes instead of theatrical costumery but still hiding behind a pair of sunglasses. 

Felix gives him a sort-of vague nod, and Claude sidles up and sits next to Dimitri. He grins. “Hey, gorgeous.” 

Dimitri, who is ridiculous, _glances around_ as if he’s looking for someone else. Then he blushes, because of course he does. “Oh, Claude, hello. I didn’t know you were in this class.” 

“It’s the first day, how could you?” Claude tosses his messenger bag on the ground and pulls out his laptop. 

“Yes, of course, I -- yes.” Dimitri smiles at him. It’s entirely too adorable and Claude thinks he might have little cartoon hearts in his own eyes; how is it possible that an actual prince is such a...well, prince? 

Claude’s a prince, too, but he doesn’t think anyone would accuse him of being as _earnest_ as Dimitri. He’s got other talents, but Dimitri is the sort of prince that should have been around when this classroom was whatever it was in the old monastery, talking about riding off into war in a great fur cape or something. 

“Your classmates are looking a little worse for wear,” Claude says, nodding toward the back of the room. 

“Yes, Sylvain had a bit too much fun last night. I had to, ah. Carry him to bed.” Dimitri looks for a moment as if maybe he shouldn’t be divulging this information, like maybe Claude will do something nefarious with it. “Please don’t repeat that, I wouldn’t want to embarrass him.” 

Claude remembers Sylvain doing body shots off someone last night and puts a hand on Dimitri’s arm -- mostly as an excuse to touch, gods, there’s so _much_ of him -- and pats it. “Don’t worry. I won’t.” From the tabloids and the fact Sylvain didn’t seem all that bothered by his reputation, Claude gets the impression that Sylvain wouldn’t really care but he doesn’t want to upset Dimitri. 

Edelgard and her shadow take seats in the front at the table next to them, and before Claude can ask Dimitri if he talked to her about the mugging and the cops, the professor shows up. At least, it’s assumed he’s the professor; he goes right up to the front of the class and sort of looks at them. 

Everyone falls quiet with him even saying a word, which is some kind of super power. But Claude just sort of _stares_ , because while this may be the first day of class, it’s not the first time he’s seen their history professor. 

The first time was last night, when he stopped a mugging _after_ Claude saw him sucking off his fencing instructor. He glances over at Dimitri, who is blushing again -- apparently he’s remembering the alley, too. 

Claude also looks over at Edelgard, who is staring at their professor with narrow-eyed speculation. No matter how hard Claude attempts to mind-meld with her and get her to look over at him, she refuses. He doesn’t even know why he wants her to. Just, what is even going on right now? 

“Hello,” the professor says, in a soft voice, as devoid of emotions as he was last night when he’d single-handedly beaten up that guy in the mask. “I’m Byleth. I’ll be teaching you this semester.” 

“I thought Professor Lear was supposed to teach this course?” Edelgard asks. She has to recognize this guy -- Byleth -- as the one from last night, but you’d never know it from her tone. 

“He was.” Professor Byleth, if that’s what he is, leans back against the large desk at the front of the room. “Now I am.” 

Claude pulls his phone out and immediately starts to text Hilda. 

[me] hilda  
[me] i have news  
[me] first i am sitting next to dimitri ;) 

[hilda] omg are you 12  
[hilda] idc unless youre like on his lap  
[hilda] and if u r then pics or it didnt happen 

[me] im in class hilda  
[me] the professor is the guy who beat up the mugger 

[hilda] wait you have fencing at 8:30 am??? 

[me] no history  
[me] the history prof is the mercenary i told u about  
[me] screenshot.pg  
[me] theres the relevant convo 

[hilda] ooohh  
[hilda] !!!  
[hilda] omg i bet u could bribe him into giving u an a haha

[me] who even thinks of that?  
[me] seriously idk if im afraid of you or in love <3 

[hilda] i get that a lot tbh  
[hilda] *laughing crying emoji*

[me] oh hey guess who else is in this class  
[me] ur secret ballerina girlfriend

Three dots appear. They disappear. They appear again. They disappear. 

Sneaky minx. 

[me] hildaaaaa  
[me] i bet u like the smell of cloves huh 

[Hilda] g2g c u l8r *kiss emoji* 

_Contact is offline_. 

Claude snorts and turns his attention back to Professor Byleth, who is asking Dimitri to borrow his textbook and flipping through it. 

“Hmm,” says Professor Byleth. “And we start, where? The beginning?” 

“That’s usually how one reads books, yes,” Dimitri says, and he’s probably the only one who could say that and not make it sound sarcastic. 

“But you don’t have to use the book,” Claude pipes up. “You know. If you have, uh. Relevant experience.” 

“In Medieval history?” says someone from behind him. “How?” 

“Nah, I just meant, you know.” Claude smiles at the professor, who gives him that creepy, blank-eyed stare. “If you had your own style. The kind where you don’t follow anyone’s rules but your own. You go your own way! No curriculum guide can contain you! Traveling the world, teaching rogue bands of students, free to take and leave assignments as you wish. You’re like, hmm, what do they call that?” He snaps his fingers. “Oh, right! A freelance professor of fortune.” 

“Is that really a thing?” asks another one of the students, a short guy with light blue hair and a voice that they can probably hear back in Almyra. “If so, maybe I’ll switch my major.” 

“It’s not a thing, Caspar,” yawns the guy sitting next to him, head propped up on his hand. 

“But if it gets you to pick a major, perhaps we should pretend it is,” says the red-head sitting next to Hubert.

“Do you want him educating children, Ferdie?” This from a girl next to the sleepy green-haired boy, with a cute little hat and a voice that makes Claude think she’s a pop singer. She actually looks familiar. He thinks he’s seen her on YouTube. 

“I have a major!” Protests the blue-haired kid, Caspar. “It’s phys ed.” 

“Gym class isn’t a major,” huffs the redhead, Ferdie. “It’s a disgrace to your family’s --” 

“Ferdinand,” Edelgard interrupts. “Let it go.” 

Ah, these are all her people, the goth kids. Which is funny, kinda, ‘cause the last time Claude saw Ferdinand he was grinding on that other Blue Lions guy wearing a pair of shorts that said _Only Sothis Can Judge Me_. Apparently, Sothis _and_ Ferdinand can judge at will, especially when it comes to majors. 

He looks back at Professor Byleth, who is...ignoring them all and flipping through the book. “That’s not how you disembowel a man,” he mutters, but Claude’s not sure he heard that right. “Well,” Professor Byleth says, glancing up. “It says we’re supposed to talk about the feudal system and how it came about due largely to agriculture--” 

“Literal slave labor to feed the elites,” mutters Edelgard. 

“But who wants to hear about traps they set in Medieval tombs to keep you from robbing their graves, and how to disarm them?” 

Claude’s never raised his hand in class so fast in his _life_. 

***

Dimitri may have a problem.

The problem in question is standing on the grassy hill overlooking the rugby field, dark hair held back from his face with a scarf, quietly stringing a bow while the breeze ruffles his shirt. Dimitri isn’t sure if it’s legal to carry a bow on campus, but Claude—and it _has_ to be Claude, Dimitri can still feel the heat of his skin on his fingers—may simply be practicing for the archery club. Or he may be here to torture Dimitri, with his tight jeans and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Dimitri sucks in a harsh breath and thinks of how badly he wanted to touch him in class today, just a brush of fingertips over his palm, the silk-smooth curls of his hair against his lips.

Something smacks into Dimitri’s gut, and he grunts softly as a green frisbee goes skittering off in the grass.

“Stop gawking or sit out, boar,” Felix shouts, as Ingrid races over to pick up the frisbee. Sylvain, who somehow has managed to make it through all his classes, lunch, and most of the afternoon in a hoodie and shades, lurches over.

“Stop calling him that, he broke your treehouse like, one time,” Sylvain says.

“He broke the _window_ with his _elbow._ ”

Sylvain lifts his sunglasses to give Dimitri a conspiratorial wink. His eyes are dark with shadow. Behind him, Felix growls as Ingrid throws the frisbee straight at his head. “Don’t sweat it, buddy,” Sylvain says. “What’s got you all bent out of shape? Thinking about last night?”

Dimitri wonders how Sylvain can shift so effortlessly from a self-destructive womanizer with a penchant for nihilism to the same person who once dried Felix’s tears and helped Dimitri learn how to tie his shoes, but here he is, all smiles and earnest intent, while still carrying the signs of last night’s debauchery. 

“Oh,” Dimitri says. “No, I. Last night was strange, certainly, and it’s stranger still to be rescued by one’s professor—“

“Sorry, what?”

“But I admit I was thinking of something else, just now,” Dimitri says. He tries not to look at Claude, who has drawn the string of the bow back to his ear. His biceps swell. His wiry muscles stand out in his legs and arms, and he’s standing so straight, almost noble, like a statue in one of the museums Edelgard keeps trying to take him to. Dimitri wants to have a painting made of the moment. Or maybe he wants to kill something, or die, or climb up the hill and ask Claude to fuck him into the grass.

Sylvain makes a soft choking sound, not quite a laugh. “Okay. We’ll go back to the professor thing, but, Dimitri. Highness. Buddy. You’re staring.”

“What?” Dimitri flushes pink. “Oh, no, I just, I was wondering if he had a license.”

Sylvain smiles. Behind him, Ashe tackles Felix in order to get to the frisbee, apologizes, and goes rolling with a bark of laughter when Felix tackles him back. Dedue, who has been sitting under a tree with one of his assignments, gets up to untangle them. 

“Sure,” Sylvain says. “So you like this guy, huh?” Dimitri chooses not to dignify that with a response. He doesn’t need to—Sylvain knows him too well, and can likely read it on his face. “Here’s the plan. I’m gonna help you get his attention.”

“Help… how, exactly?”

Sylvain’s smile broadens. Then, just as Claude has his arrow pulled taut on the bow, Sylvain puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles sharply. The arrow goes veering wildly into the grass, and when Claude turns to look, Sylvain puts both hands on Dimitri’s white button-up shirt, grins like a fox, and rips the shirt open.

Buttons fly. Dimitri gasps slightly as his pecs are exposed to the cool air, and Sylvain has the _audacity_ to _slap_ them, like they’re bags of rice at the supermarket. 

“Sylvain,” Dimitri hisses.

“The fuck,” Felix says, from where Dedue is dragging him and Ashe off the field like a pair of dejected kittens.

“You’re welcome,” Sylvain says. “Now leave it open, play some frisbee, and let the Sylvain magic do its work.”

Honestly, Dimitri would rather go home and never set eyes on Claude von Riegan again, but when he glances at the hill, Claude is… is certainly staring back. Dimitri’s face must be red as a light by now. He shakes his hair out of his face and turns to gesture for the frisbee.

It’s damn uncomfortable, playing ultimate frisbee with his shirt hanging open. For one, Claude isn’t the only one staring. Dimitri is well aware that his chest is rather… endowed, to an extent, and yes, he does take care with his appearance, but there’s no reason for Felix to be so distracted by the slip of a _nipple_ that he hits Sylvain in the face with the frisbee. Though… now that he thinks of it… maybe he’s doing Dimitri a favor. Still, Dimitri helps Sylvain with the bruise all the same, and when he’s done guiding him to the tree where Dedue is solemnly eating a box of spiced cookies Ashe made, Mercedes has taken Sylvain’s place, and no one has the heart to go quite so hard when they’re playing with someone who smiles when she loses and braids clover flowers in her hair. 

When he does dare to look back up the hill, Dimitri groans. He’s gathered an audience—One of Edelgard’s friends, Ferdinand, and a man with a rose on his shoulder who looks vaguely like Lorenz from Dimitri’s disastrous freshman art class years ago, as well as a smattering of people he recognizes from the club. Hilda Goneril is there, as well, nudging Claude with her elbow, and Dimitri blushes when Claude raises a hand in greeting.

Sylvain sidles up to him. “Go on,” he says. “Go up there and try to look like one of those guys from an Austen movie. The ones Mercie watches.”

“I don’t think I can…” Dimitri looks down at his phone, and Sylvain muscles in next to him to look.

[claude]nice  
[claude]you can’t see this, but your left side is wide open  
[claude]nice view though, I’m not complaining

“Okay, that’s good,” Sylvain says. “It’s like the, the mating dance of the jocks. I’ve done this. So what you want to say back is, _Thanks, I can’t stop thinking about you since last night._ ”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” Dimitri says.

“Sure it is. Then tell him all the things you want to do with him.” Sylvain’s gaze slides towards Felix, who has stripped off his shirt and is rubbing a towel over his face. “Like. Tell him how hot and lean his body is. How you wanna, I don’t know, lick his cheekbones and pull his hair and ride his cock until he’s breathless and fucked out—“

Dimitri gives Sylvain a long look. “Right. You know. There’s this club Annette’s a part of, they’re always looking for new members—“

“Shit, he’s coming. Look hot. Pour water on your shirt or something.” Sylvain pats him on the pecs _again_ and goes racing off for Felix, with his cheekbones and dark hair, leaving Dimitri alone as Claude strides down the hill. He _does_ look a little like one of the heroes from the movies Mercedes likes to watch, all wind-swept and smiling, and there’s something almost familiar about him, like this… Dimitri straightens his shoulders and heads up to meet him halfway.

“Hey,” Claude says, smiling like he and Dimitri are sharing their own, private joke, even as they’re watched by a gathering crowd on both sides. “Did well out there.”

“Oh, hardly,” Dimitri says. “But thank you.” He looks at Sylvain, who is miming something over Claude’s shoulder. “Would you like to… ah. Eat?”

Sylvain slaps his own ass and winks. Dimitri frowns, and Claude glances over his shoulder just in time to see Felix smack Sylvain lightly on the side of the head.

“Sure,” he says. “I’m done with classes for the day.”

“Maybe we can, at the dorm,” Dimitri says, trying to ignore Sylvain’s attempts to help. “If you’d like.”

Claude smiles at him, and Dimitri’s chest _aches._ “Sounds great.”

They never do get around to eating dinner. Dimitri has every intent to be a good host—He does know how to boil water for pasta at least—but they’re barely into the downstairs common room when Claude’s hand slips down to cup Dimitri’s ass, and Dimitri tentatively touches the back of Claude’s neck, and then they’re knocking Ingrid’s painting of a jazz singer off the wall of the stairway and wrapping their legs around each other in a mad stumble to the bedroom. 

He _does_ stop to fix the painting, though.

Claude practically shoves him through the bedroom door, and Dimitri collapses on the bed with a groan of springs. He looks up at him, smiling wicked in the warm glow of a sunny afternoon, and bites the inside of his cheek.

“You were so fucking hot back there,” Claude says. He climbs over Dimitri and kisses him breathless onto the pillow. Dimitri just tries to keep up, groping down Claude’s body, tracing the muscles of his arms and back. Claude pulls away for a moment and drags his own shirt up over his head.

“Oh,” Dimitri says, softly. He gently slides his hands up Claude’s chest and along his neck, until his fingers are resting just over Claude’s lips.

Claude takes two of Dimitri’s fingers in his mouth and grinds down over his lap. Dimitri gasps for breath, and Claude sucks at his fingers, tongue rolling over them, making such an obscene sound that Dimitri pulls his hand away and groans through his teeth.

“I like you like this,” Claude says. He brushes his hand over Dimitri’s nipples, just lightly enough to send a shiver over Dimitri’s skin. “All worked up for me.” He gives Dimitri a questioning look and glances down, and Dimitri doesn’t even bother saying it—His hands fly to the buttons, and Claude smiles as he kisses Dimitri through it, making his fingers fumble and his thighs tense.

Claude does have to get up to remove his own jeans, and Dimitri watches him with open hunger as he strips down, revealing his already half hard cock and his muscular legs. He has a swordsman’s body, flexible and deceptively strong, and when he settles over Dimitri again and starts biting at his shoulder and neck, Dimitri grabs him by the ass and holds them flush together. Claude groans, shifts over him, his cock sliding up Dimitri’s abs.

“I’ve never…” Dimitri chokes on the words as Claude sucks a mark onto his neck. “I don’t have the most, mm, experience in this, this field…”

“It’s okay,” Claude says. His voice is a rumble against his skin, and he pets Dimitri’s hair out of his face. “We can do this, yeah?” He grinds against him, and Dimitri’s cock twitches against Claude’s thigh. “Is this good?”

“Yes,” Dimitri whispers. “Yes, please.”

“Your eyes are closed,” Claude says, and Dimitri is relieved to hear that his voice is just as strained as Dimitri’s. “I want to see them. You have gorgeous eyes, Dimitri.” He sits up to grind against him properly, wrapping a hand loosely around them both. Dimitri slits his eyes open and sees the dark flush on Claude’s cheeks, his open mouth, the way his chest moves when he rocks his hips forward.

“Yeah,” Claude says, smiling like Dimitri’s done more than just lie there and get wrecked under him. “Yeah, that’s good, Dimitri, I was thinking about this all last night. Bet you were, too, yeah?”

“Y-yes,” Dimitri gasps. Claude rakes his nails down Dimitri’s chest as he grinds over him, and that’s enough, that’s what tips him over. He bites his hand as he comes, and Claude says something in Almyran, but Dimitri can only catch the word for _beautiful_ before Claude is kissing him, riding out his own release against the ridge of Dimitri’s abs. He moans when he comes, and Dimitri wraps his arms around him despite the mess they’ve made, holding him close.

“Fuck,” Dimitri whispers, and blushes as Claude beams at him. “Oh, hell.”

“Wait,” Claude says. Dimitri twists to stare at the wall. “Wait, did I make you _curse?_ ”

“It isn’t that uncommon,” Dimitri says, but he smiles despite himself, and Claude kisses the side of his jaw.

“I’m gonna make you say that again,” Claude says, and presses his lips over one of the marks he made high on Dimitri’s neck. Dimitri shivers pleasantly, and touches a bite mark of his own, just below Claude’s ear. “And that’s a promise.”

***  
“Just, for another thing, it’s not like Dimitri hasn’t seen the evidence for himself,” Sylvain continues, while Felix grits his teeth and tries not to say anything. “He was there at the Abyss, he saw me getting loved on by all those ladies!” 

“Are you sure you remember?” Felix snarks, before he can stop himself. He should really, really know better than to start this. Because Sylvain will regale him with all the details of the women he’s hooked up with, and Felix has promised himself, he’s _sworn_ , that this is going to be the year he doesn’t put himself through this torture. 

That’s lasted, what, two, three, four days, tops? 

“Believe me,” Sylvain says, throwing an arm around Felix’s shoulders, which go tense immediately. “I won’t forget anytime soon. But my point is, how can Dimitri even _think_ I should join Annette’s club? I mean, just because I know what to tell him to get someone who’s clearly interested in him to --” 

“Sylvain,” Felix interrupts. Except that when Sylvain looks at him, expectant, Felix has no idea what to say. 

He knows what he _wants_ to say -- _how can you be so dumb, I know your test scores were off the charts, you’re always on the Dean’s List and you barely have to study, how can you not know?_ \-- or maybe, _what are you so afraid of, who do you think is going to care?_ \-- to the question that he’s wanted to ask for years -- _why are we still pretending you never kissed me?_

He knows he’s not going to say any of these things. Felix sighs inwardly. He’s still such a fucking coward, too afraid to hear Sylvain laugh it off and say it didn’t matter when to Felix, fourteen and shaken to his core, finally understood what it meant that he’d never been into girls like his older brother and all his friends. 

“Do you think it worked?” he says, instead. 

“Trust me, buddy,” Sylvain grins at him as they round the Science Building. “Our sweet prince is probably getting laid as we speak. Hey, do you think he’s cute?” 

“Dimitri?” Felix glances at him. “Are you really asking me that?” 

“I meant Claude,” Sylvain says. 

“Why are you asking me?” Felix asks. They both know why. He shrugs out from beneath Sylvain’s arm even though it pains him to do it. He can’t let himself like this when Sylvain can’t even be honest with himself. 

“Because, y’know, you’d know, right?” 

“Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I want to sleep with every guy I see,” Felix snaps. 

“I’m not asking if you want to sleep with him, Felix, just if you thought he was hot.” Sylvain shrugs. “He seemed good-looking to me, but I’m not the expert.” 

Felix wonders just how much experience Sylvain thinks he has. “Yeah, sure, he’s fine.” That’s actually not the whole truth -- Claude is smoking hot, it’s obvious -- but he doesn’t want to go here with Sylvain. It’s too -- too much, as weighty as Sylvain’s arm around his shoulders. But he knows how tenacious Sylvain is when he’s like this. And the last thing Felix wants to do is listen to Sylvain go on and on about a guy while pretending it’s because of Dimitri. 

Glancing over, Felix sees the answer to his problem in the flicker of something metallic through the trees behind the parking lot. At first he thinks it’s just a trick of the light, but when he leans a little closer, he can just see the scattered red pieces of what looks like a tail light among the decaying pine needles. He spots the broken limb of a tree and scrapes along the trunks near the glass, and with a frown he cuts off Sylvain talking about how nice Claude’s arms were -- _honestly, Sylvain_ \-- and says, “Come on.” 

With that, he heads off into the forest. 

“Felix, what --” Sylvain follows him, of course. That’s the thing about Sylvain. No matter how frustrated he makes Felix, not matter how much Felix gets off biting his own hand and swearing the man he’s thinking about is just a generic redhead he’s known his whole life and _not_ his can’t-be-this-oblivious best friend, Sylvain is trustworthy. He runs into the woods after Felix, even though Felix would rather he didn’t. 

“I think someone might have veered off the road,” Felix says, eyes scanning the thicket of trees. “Look.” He picks up a side view mirror, wires frayed, the glass shattered. 

“Yeah?” Sylvain is nearly the same height as Dimitri, but his added inches on Felix don’t seem to be giving him any better luck in spotting the cloaked person. “Doesn’t even look dirty. That’s weird. And this branch just broke off. You think someone’s hurt?” 

He never even hints that Felix might be wrong about this -- and damn him, this is the reason why Felix can’t just get over him. “Maybe.”

“Why _is_ there this huge fuck-off forest next to the science building, anyway?” Sylvain grouses, as they made their way deeper into the woods. It’s so full of trees that it’s starting to look like twilight, the farther they venture, with the canopy of leaves still thick enough even in the beginning of autumn to block out the weakening sun. 

It gives Felix a chill. He’s from a cold, northern seascape. You can see for miles while you freeze and shiver in your boots. Having all this vegetation around makes him feel claustrophobic. 

“Shit.” Sylvain grabs Felix’s shoulder tight, and Felix can feel his breath harsh on his neck. “There it is.”

The car doesn’t even look that damaged, really. The mirror is broken, and there’s a spider-webbing crack over the windshield, but it looks like it just stopped on its own, peacefully abandoned in the woods like every other car that breaks down and isn’t worth hauling off.

Or it would be, if it weren’t for the body in the driver’s seat.

“Stay where you are.” Sylvain’s voice is sharp, and his fingers tense on Felix’s shoulder. “Just. Stay here.”

“Sylvain, I’m not—“

Sylvain looks at him, then, and there’s something in his eyes that stops Felix cold, something desperate. _He’s scared,_ Felix thinks. 

“It’s alright,” Felix says. He takes Sylvain’s hand off his shoulder and steps forward. “Come on, let’s make sure they’re okay.”

“They’re not okay, Felix,” Sylvain says. He grabs him again, dragging him back a step. Before Felix can say anything else, he pushes ahead and approaches the window. He stands there a minute, hands flexing at his sides, and stares down at the figure behind the glass.

“It’s Professor Lear,” he says at last, turning to look at Felix with a numb look in his eyes. “From the history department. And it looks like he’s been dead for a while.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Oh, my Goddess, Claude! Did you _hear_?” 

Claude, who is moving through his day with the satisfied smile of a man who seduced the object of his fantasies and also decided he _liked_ when they were outside of bed as well as in it, blinks owlishy at Hilda and has, for one second, the thought _how does she know I’m infatuated already with the future king of Faerghus?_

Which, wait, no. She can’t mean that. Claude’s ridiculous, and infatuated, and right now he’s clueless. “Hear, what?” 

“Um, the dead body?” Hilda puts a hand on her hip. “Seriously? The dead guy in the woods?” 

“Are you in some, like, alternate reality game? Is this experimental college theater? What?” Claude stares at her.

“The dead guy they found in the car in the woods? Professor Lear? He was supposed to be your history professor?” 

“ _Oh._ Claude blinks. “No, I didn’t hear that.” 

“Seriously, it was all around campus, how did you miss it?” Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “Where were you all afternoon?” 

_In bed with Dimitri._ “Hey, before I answer all your questions, why don’t you try answering one of mine -- what’s up with you and Edelgard?” And yeah, there’s no mistaking the flash of something in Hilda’s expression when he says her name. “She’s your ballerina, yeah?” 

“She’s an _ex_ ballerina, and she’s not _my_ anything,” Hilda says imperiously, tossing her glorious pink hair and stomping one foot. She’s sort of got this down to an art form. It is not going to work on Claude. To hear his father tell it, he _invented_ imperious distracting temper tantrums to avoid being in trouble for something he didn’t want to talk about. 

“But you were making out with her, at the club? Or else I’m hallucinating pink-haired cute girls who look like you?” 

The cute mollifies her. A little. “Fine! Fine. Yes, we had a...thing. I don’t want to talk about it. And hel _lo_ , are you not more curious about the murdered professor?” 

“Honestly, I’m at about even -- wait, how’d they know he was murdered?” Claude blinks. “Earlier you just said it was a body in the car.” 

“Who drives a car into a forest?” 

“Uh.” He thinks. “Harry Potter?” 

“His car could _fly_ , Claude. My point is, obviously he’s been murdered. No one just, like. Drives into a forest and _dies_ there in their _car_.” 

He wonders how she knows that, exactly. “It could have been suicide.” 

“That’s depressing, wow.” 

“And murder isn’t?” Claude asks. “Do you know for sure that it was murder? I mean. Like, is that what they’re saying?” 

“I don’t know, but I’ve watched a _lot_ of Fodlan’s Forensic Findings and like, come on. Dude in a car? In a place a car isn’t supposed to be? Murder.” 

He honestly can’t argue with that, and it’s weird. It seems like the kind of thing he should be able to argue about. Hilda is a poly sci major who sometimes blows off her upper-level classes to go to the craft store. She is not a forensic scientist. 

But she _is_ smarter than nearly anyone gives her credit for, probably because she goes out of her way not to let anyone know in fear they may demand she do something like, say, not skip class to go to the craft store. 

“All I’m saying is,” Hilda continues, ominously, as she dumps her books on Claude to ostensibly stop and tie her shoe -- which Claude knows from experience is just so she can make him carry them -- “How bad did that mercenary of yours need a job?” 

Claude looks around for a moment, because the last thing he needs is someone saying the disguised crown prince of Almyra is hiring a mercenary and talking about murder. But no one knows who he is, save Edelgard, and that’s still only a maybe. 

“I don’t think anyone kills over faculty positions in the history department, do you?” 

“According to my brother, academia is like, cutthroat and worse than politics,” Hilda says. 

“Huh.” He thinks about this. “Can you do me a favor the next time you’re out with your not-girlfriend?” 

“Could we not talk about this,” says Hilda, eyes darting around. “It’s not -- we don’t hang out like, y’know, you and me hang out. With the talking. And the liking each other’s company. The mutual respect. The things in common. The not being a crazy stuck-up rich girl who thinks she’s a _revolutionary_ \--” 

“Okay, well, when you’re done hate-fucking or whatever you call it, ask if she called the cops and what they said about the mugging.” He turns and presses all of Hilda’s books into her arms. “And I keep forgetting to ask who that was you were talking to at Abyss. Actually talking to, I mean. The girl with the blue hair?” 

A curious expression comes over Hilda’s face -- the softest, sweetest sort of smile Claude’s ever seen curves her mouth, and her pink eyes soften and he swears he can see them start shimmering like she’s in an anime. It’s amazing. “Oh, that’s my -- my roommate. Marianne.” 

“That’s the ghost horse girl?” Claude blinks. “Huh. I still haven’t met her yet.” 

“She’s kind of shy. And I think she has a box of kittens under her bed.” 

Now _Claude_ thinks _his_ eyes are shining like an anime character. He loves cats. “Really?” 

“Yeah. Stop asking me about my ex and maybe you can come see them. Later. Have fun sexin’ up royalty.” With a wave, Hilda hurries off and leaves Claude thinking about kittens, Edelgard, Hilda and Edelgard making out, Hilda and _Marianne_ making out, briefly himself making out with all of them, and then Dimitri. That last makes him smile, and he heads off to meet his maybe-hopefully-boyfriend for a night of theater and, if he’s lucky...well. Getting lucky. 

***

Perhaps Dimitri should have simply asked Claude to dinner.

“Lo!” Annette, standing on stage with her hair in a thick orange wig and her shoulders shrouded in a cape much too large for her, holds up her hand to a gangly freshman holding a stage light. “Is that the goddess whose, uh, twinkly blinkly visage doth shimmer before me?”

“What?” Three other members of the Garreg Mach Improv Troupe look up, heads tilted. “I didn’t see. I was too busy looking at my _cell phone._ ”

Off stage, someone slams their fist on a drum, and the lights go out.

“Oh my gods,” Claude whispers.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri whispers back. They’re sitting a few rows up, on the raised bleachers surrounding the stage. Below them, freshman members of the Drama 150 classes sit in numb silence while someone off to the side sets up a _cello._ “Annette’s father works on campus, and she invited him to her first show of the year, so I thought it might be best to make an appearance.”

Claude peers around the room. The only staff member in the audience is the drama teacher, Seteth, who sits in abject silence on the front row. His brows lower slightly. “He ever show to one of these things?”

“Not… yet, no,” Dimitri whispers.

Claude leans into Dimitri’s side, and Dimitri holds down a giddy thrill at the tickle of his hair on Dimitri’s shoulder. “Then we’ll pack the place, next time.”

Dimitri gives Claude a grateful look, and Claude smiles grimly. On the stage, Dorothea adjusts her hat, and the cellist starts to play, low and mournful.

“A love song from an ancient land!” Half the audience jumps as Caspar, one of Edelgard’s crew, practically screams from the rafters. Dorothea flashes a dazzling smile and starts to sing.

“What ancient land,” a woman says, two rows down. Dimitri recognizes her as Petra, one of Edelgard’s friends. She’s some sort of linguist, he thinks—El said she knew over eleven languages before moving to Fódlan. “Every land is ancient.”

“Take a look at the cellist,” Claude whispers. Dimitri grabs Claude’s thigh for support as he leans around him, and stops short as he sees the pale blond hair and deeply woeful face of Professor Jeritza. Claude suppresses a snort, and Dimitri stares for a second, trying to reconcile this man with the one being… seduced… by their history professor in an alley. 

“This is not a language,” Petra says. Someone hisses at her to be silent, and she raises her voice. “It is _not._ ”

Claude practically climbs into Dimitri’s lap in order to whisper in his ear. He wraps an arm around his neck, and Dimitri wonders, a little dizzily, the last time he’d been touched so often by someone with so much _purpose._ It’s intoxicating. “Wonder if he knows about the last history professor. The one our mercenary replaced.”

Dimitri can’t suppress a shiver at that. He can still see the dull look in Sylvain’s eyes as he sat in silence in the Blue Lions common room, Felix perched at his side like a panther ready to maul anyone who got too close. “He wouldn’t say anything if he did know.”

“Bet we can find out,” Claude whispers, but Dimitri can’t say anything to _that,_ because Dorothea stops singing as a pole slowly descends into the middle of the stage. The stagehand starts flashing his single light around the floor as Professor Jeritza attempts to replicate dubstep with his cello, and Linhardt, dressed in black with his green hair swinging, goes sliding upside down on the pole. He rotates once, slowly, before he lands on his back and stands up.

He looks out at the crowd, somber and still.

“We live in a society,” he says, and stalks off the stage.

Someone bangs the drum. Claude makes a sound like a dying duck and shoves his face in Dimitri’s shoulder.

Which means he misses the next part, where Annette, Claude’s tiny Edelgard—Lysithea—and _Mercedes_ step out in empire-waist gowns and flower crowns. They’re all holding prop swords, and Lysithea clears her throat.

“Only one man and one woman,” she says, in a wooden voice. “Only one man and one woman.”

“My love,” Mercedes says, and Annette slowly, jerkily swoons, giving Mercedes enough time to catch her. They kiss, which would be—which would be fine, probably, except Dimitri is fairly sure there shouldn’t be _quite_ so much tongue, and—yes, Annette is _definitely_ giving Lysithea a thumbs up from behind Mercedes’ back.

“No!” Lysithea cries. “I cannot handle this!”

“ _Thank you for bringing me here,_ ” Claude gasps, from where he’s practically hanging off Dimitri’s neck.

“You want this, too!” Annette says, when Mercedes lets her come up for air.

“Never!” Lysithea shouts. She holds up her sword. “The patriarchy will save me!”

“The patriarchy!” voices cry, from behind the curtain. “The patriarchy!”

“Oh _gods,_ ” Claude says. Dimitri sighs and pats the back of his head.

Lysithea pretends to stab herself in the heart. Annette and Mercedes forget, it seems, that a death scene is happening, and Lysithea has to lift her head and hiss something at them for the two of them to sheepishly break apart. They drop their swords and bend down to lift Lysithea over their heads, walking her slowly in a circle like a strange human sacrifice in an empire dress.

“You should probably see this,” Dimitri whispers, and Claude shudders in his arms. He tries to pull himself together, glances behind him, tries again, and finally shifts so he’s sitting in Dimitri’s lap, arms crossed, his face set in a stern, impassive expression.

Lysithea is turned to face them, and she stops midway through her speech on the tragedy of a life lived in repression to stare at Claude, open-mouthed. 

Claude gives her a wink. Annette, whose arms are trembling, pokes her head out from under Lysithea and beams at the crowd.

“Thank you, Garreg Mach!” she says. “And please leave your donations to the drama department in the hat by the door!”

Claude starts to applaud. He stands up, tears in his eyes, clapping so loudly that the other members of the audience look around in shamefaced silence before they half-heartedly join in. Claude whistles, and Annette’s face lights up. She waves at the crowd, and Lysithea drops with a screech that echoes over Claude’s enthusiastic applause.

Annette goes running up to them as soon as the freshmen flee to their dorms. She’s taken off her gown, and is wearing a corduroy skirt held up by rainbow suspenders, a Garreg Mach U Improv Troupe T-Shirt, and light-up flats. Claude looks like he wants to wrap her up and take her home, which Dimitri finds is a common response to anyone who’s talked to Annette for more than a minute.

“You’re sure it was okay?” she asks, twisting her hair in her fingers. 

“Annette, I will remember this play for the rest of my life,” Claude says. She smiles. 

“Good, because, um,” She glances at Dimitri. “I’m kind of auditioning to play, um, the king of Faerghus in our rendition of the dragon war—“

Dimitri only barely manages not to cover his face with both hands. The dragon war opera is one of the most seditious in recent history. Edelgard danced for it once. It’s all about one of Dimitri’s ancestors, who apparently invaded Almyra under suspicion of stealing his horse, sided with a priestess who turned into a dragon, and lost some poor soul their heart. To add insult to injury, the horse hadn’t been stolen—it had simply died of old age. It wasn’t exactly Faerghus’ crowning moment, even if the nonsense about the dragon probably wasn’t real.

“Do you want us to be there for moral support?” Claude asks. “Cause I mean, you’ve got this in the bag, but…”

“I wouldn’t say _no,_ ” Annette says. 

“Then we’ll be there.” Dimitri attempts a smile. “You can’t go wrong when the mad king’s great-great-great grandson approves.”

“Thanks!” Annette pats Dimitri on the arm. “And don’t worry, your highness. You’d never go to war with Almyra over a horse.”

“Or at all,” Dimitri adds. “We’ve been allies for over a century, and their imported dyes—“

“Stop him,” Annette whispers. Claude winks and slings an arm around Dimitri’s. 

“Come on, leave the maestro to her work.” He tows them out the door to the theater, where they blink in the bright light of the afternoon sun. “We’re definitely gonna have to see that play.”

“Or I will, at least.” Dimitri sighs. “It’s tradition. My father went to every seditious play he could manage to attend. He said it was to prove that he doesn’t support censorship, but I suspect he liked to intimidate the actors.”

“Yeah, no wonder my dad liked him,” Claude says. He stops short, and his face goes blank, like a slate wiped clean. “Sorry. I know that sounds kind of…”

“Don’t worry,” Dimitri says. “I’m used to people knowing about my family, to an extent.”

Claude shoves his hands in his sweater pockets and bumps Dimitri with his shoulder. “But not completely,” he says. “You’re the one who really knows them.”

Dimitri wraps an arm around Claude’s waist, drawing him in. “Thank you. It’s… unsettling, how many people think they have a claim on you, just because they’ve read the papers or seen the footage.”

Claude’s silent for a moment. They walk through fallen pine needles, which carpet the sidewalks of the quad even with freshmen work-study gardeners racing to keep up, and Dimitri breathes in the chill breeze of early fall. As they skirt the edges of the Sothis Memorial building, Claude slows.

“You know,” he says. “Staff apartments are supposed to be down the hill, right?”

“Yes,” Dimitri says. “Annette’s father—he worked for my father, once, and he invited me to dinner there. When I was a sophomore.”

Claude hums to himself. “Think our new history professor’s holed away down there?”

“I… think so? Why?”

“Lots of rumors spreading around campus right now,” Claude says. “History professor dies, and suddenly here’s a new one, practically the next day. People are talking.”

“Well, I’d hardly base my opinion on rumor,” Dimitri says.

“Right.” Claude smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and Dimitri slowly pulls away. “Which is why I think we might want to go right to the source.” He turns to Dimitri and tilts his head towards the slope of the hill. “What do you say? Let’s go treat our mercenary to a drink.”

*** 

Hilda honestly has no idea why this keeps happening. 

One minute, she’s minding her own business and thinking about if she could _maybe_ help Claude out by asking… _her_...about the police and the whole mugging thing. The next, she smells the distinctive aroma of cloves and hears a voice talking about the classist implications of restricting textbook resale to only the campus bookstore. 

Ugh. Does Edelgard not know how to have fun for like, two minutes before she starts yelling about something being unfair? Honestly. The world sucks a lot, why is this always such a _surprise_ to her? And it’s not like she’s going to have a problem affording her books. For all Edelgard yells about class and privilege, she’s got a killer wardrobe, perfect make-up, and drives her own _roadster_. 

Hilda could just go back to her room. Try and see if her adorable, sweet, lovely roommate wants to like, talk in actual sentences or even just stare at the box of kittens some more. Instead, she sighs inwardly and turns to follow the lingering scent of cloves. It’s for Claude, she tells herself. She adores Claude, even if she thinks it’s kind of funny that he doesn’t think she knows who he is. 

She’s from, like, a stone’s throw from Almyra. Of _course_ she knows the crown prince when she sees him. But she likes Claude, and she’s sure he’ll tell her why he’s pretending to be someone else eventually. Then he’ll totally owe her, for like, life. And who doesn’t want the future king owing them a favor? Especially if he and Prince Dimitri end up married or whatever. Think how advantageous _that_ will be! 

And they think she doesn’t pay attention in her classes. Politics is just networking and talking over people and making them do things for you for vague promises that you might, one day, do something for _them_. Hilda figured this out when she was eight. Like she needs a degree, ha! 

Edelgard glances up at her. Whoever she was talking to about textbook resale either got bored and died and turned to shriveled up dust, or was run off by Hubert, or took the chance to flee before Edelgard tried to coerce them into a protest march or something. She’s stupidly hot. Stupid Edelgard. Stupid _Hilda_. 

“What,” says Edelgard, taking a drag off her cigarette. 

“Ugh,” says Hilda, marching up to her. She opens her mouth to say something about -- wait, what was it, again? Something for Claude? Instead, she reaches out, steals Edelgard’s clove and takes a drag. “You should stop smoking these. They can kill you.” 

“They can try,” Edelgard says grimly, like the clove cigarettes are sentient and capable of being defeated by the sheer force of her will. “Don’t you have a frat party to get to? A low-cut top to wear?” 

“I don’t know, don’t you have a rich kid to lecture like a hypocrite?” 

Once upon a time, Hilda had actually _liked_ Edelgard. She was hot, weird, passionate, and a little scary in a way that really did it for her. They’d met at a summer dance intensive workshop in Enbarr, and after two weeks were already sneaking off to make out in unused studios. At first it had been great, really. 

But then, Edelgard kept trying to get Hilda to _do_ things, and not the kind of things Hilda thought she would do with her hot girlfriend who had a lot of energy and her own penthouse near the dance studio. No, Edelgard wanted Hilda to hate things, boycott a different company every week and be _loud_ about it, wanted Hilda to get up early the days they didn’t have a workshop and wear sensible shoes to hold a poster about someone being oppressed. She did not seem to think _Hilda_ was the one being oppressed, when all Hilda wanted was to make out, order in and watch reality tv on Edelgard’s giant 4K television before they went to dance class. 

Edelgard called her spoiled and flighty and empty-headed, accused her of coasting on her family’s influence and money into a life that was meaningless and full of fluff and pointless endeavors that would serve no one. Hilda accused her of assuaging her guilt over her immense privilege by picking fights over every injustice that could be easily fit onto a posterboard. 

The sex was amazing. Even better with the fighting. 

By the time their summer was over, they couldn’t stand each other. Garreg Mach wasn’t big enough to avoid each other entirely, but Hilda would have held her ground this year if Edie hadn’t looked so hot in that outfit at The Abyss, that short little red number that made her legs look amazing. 

“Did you need something?” Edelgard asks, now, half in the shadow as the sun starts to set. “If you want to ask me about your boyfriend and my step-brother, I’m not getting involved. If you can’t handle non-monogamy, that’s your own narrow-minded world view and it’s _not_ my fault --” 

Hilda bursts out laughing. She takes another drag of the clove. “Claude’s not my boyfriend, but he must really like your step-brother because he went to the college improv play.” 

Edelgard’s eyes widen. “Wow.” 

If there’s one thing they agree on, besides sex, it’s the horror of college improv. “If you want to do some good in the world, you should shut _that_ down.” 

“I tried,” Edelgard mutters. “Ferdinand likes it. He’s there, too.” 

“I figured. Where’s Hubert? I don’t see him glaring at me from the shadows.” 

Edelgard snatches her cigarette back from Hilda. “Busy. He has his own life, you know.” 

“Nice of you to let him,” Hilda says, sweetly. “I wouldn’t have thought anarchists were into valets but I guess someone has to get you out of that dress.” 

And in two seconds, Hilda finds herself pressed up against the rough brick wall with a gorgeously irritated and utterly infuriating ex-girlfriend pressed up against her, breathing spicy smoke and disdain into her face. “Sounds like you’re volunteering.” 

“You wish,” Hilda huffs, and then Edelgard kisses her. 

Thirty minutes later, Hilda is arching up off Edelgard’s _not_ anarchist-approved several thousand thread-count Morfis cotton sheets, naked and messy, Edelgard’s mouth being just as bossy as ever between her legs while she makes Hilda come three times in a row. 

Somewhere between that third orgasm - the most intense of all, with three of Edelgard’s slim fingers fucking inside her so perfect, her mouth relentless on her clit -- and Hilda ending up with Edelgard riding her face and moaning as loud as she yells about the wage gap, Hilda has the brief thought about _ask her about the cops_ , but then Edelgard comes and her thighs tigthen and she gasps out, “After this I’m getting the strap-on out and making you work for something for once,” and Hilda sort of forgets about anything but shutting her up and also maybe making _Edelgard_ use the strap-on, those things are really tiring. 

_Sorry, Claude. I’ll ask her later. On text. After I unblock her number. Which I’ll do after I block it, again._

***

There’s something deeply unsettling about Byleth Eisner, Claude thinks, as he and Dimitri are shown into the professor’s small house for tea. And considering the spectacle they just came from, that’s saying something. 

But even a pole-dancing Linhardt and Dorothea singing in a made-up language and _Lysithea in a flower crown_ sort of pales in comparison to their new history professor beckoning them in like they were expected, showing them to a room with tea for already set up on a low table surrounded by pillows. 

There’s Almyran pine, chamomile, and honeyed almond blend. Four cups, which is concerning since Byleth lives alone and there’s only three of them. He exchanges a glance at Dimitri, but Dimitri is going full-on history nerd at the decor. 

“Oh, Professor, is this a levin sword?” Dimitri is staring, enraptured, at the sword hanging on a wall that is full of...a lot of swords. One looks like maybe. It was used. Recently? Or that could be rust. Right. 

“Yes,” Byleth says, standing next to them. 

“Fascinating! Father mentioned them once, is it true they once believed them to be conduits for magic?” 

“They did some experimentation with electrical currents, yes.” Byleth nods at the sword. “It’s said there was an entire battalion who went into battle during a storm, hoping to harness the power of the lightning to defeat their foes.” 

“Did it work?” Claude asks, curious. He’s used to Almyran weapons, mostly bows. Swords are definitely a Fodlan thing. And a Faerghan thing, if the look on Dimitri’s face is any indication. Rushing out in a storm waving a metal sword around seems like a thing Faerghans would do, though some of Claude’s ancestors used to fly wyverns into them so maybe it’s just that people are stupid everywhere. 

“Well. It depends.” 

“On what?” asks Claude. 

“On whose side you were on,” Byleth says, calmly. “Most of those who carried the swords ended up electrocuted when the lightning struck. So I suppose it worked for their foes.” 

“Uh,” says Claude. “I guess so.” He backs up from the rack of weapons, but then he notices a brave bow. “Oh, huh. Those are rare, where’d you get it?” He nods at the bow. 

Byleth spares it a glance. “Dig site in Almyra. Some of King Malik’s soldiers asked a few too many questions about our papers. I won it off their commanding officer. I think I may have cracked his jaw.”

“Yeah?” Claude’s voice comes out an octave too high. “Who was it?”

“General Nader. He wasn’t so bad, really. He did buy me drinks, after. Sit down, the tea is still warm.”

Claude tries not to think about the fact that his professor, the man he’s covertly planning to interrogate, once got into a fistfight with _Nader the Undefeated_ and _won._ Nader. The man who taught Claude how to fight. The head of his father’s security detail. The guy Claude called _Uncle_ for most of his life. _That_ Nader. Claude forces a sunny smile and sits down on one of the pillows, crossing his legs under him. Dimitri tries to follow suit, and Byleth carefully lifts two of the cups just before his knees hit the table. Saucers rattle, and Dimitri blushes pink. 

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Byleth sits on the other side of the table. “Bought them second-hand this morning.”

Claude rubs at the raised hairs on the back of his neck. “So you must’ve, uh, shown up on short notice, huh, Teach?”

“In a way.” Byleth adds sugar to Claude’s tea, but he just passes Dimitri the entire pot of honey. Dimitri takes it with a sheepish smile. “I was here a few nights ago, and the president offered me the job.”

“On the spot?” Dimitri asks.

“What day, exactly?” Claude says, before Byleth can speak. He thinks about this, or seems to. He’s not an easy read even now, in a place that should be his, holding a teacup in both hands.

“The day before we met,” Byleth says, at last. “President Rhea said he’d resigned that morning, and I’m technically qualified. My father says she has a habit of trying to get our family into the college. We’re her own little collection.”

Claude isn’t sure how to respond to that. He’s seen the college president all of once, when she stopped by to greet him on the first day of his internship that summer. She’d struck him as a bit too… sweet, for his tastes. Motherly, maybe. Claude’s own mom is the sort who won archery championships when she was a teenager and ran off with the prince of a foreign country after she got into a fistfight with him in the royal gardens. She loves Claude, sure, but she and President Rhea might as well be total opposites. Thank gods.

“We heard it was murder,” Dimitri blurts out. “What happened to Professor Lear.”

“Mm.” Byleth doesn’t seem too upset by this, but then, he doesn’t seem too moved by _anything._ “Yes. I figured.” When Claude and Dimitri just blink, he sets down his cup. “There were no tire tracks on the road. I checked this morning when I heard the news. If he drove into the woods by accident, he would have lost control. It looks like the car was pushed, and in any case, they say his injuries don’t match the state of the car.”

“How do you know that?” Claude asks. “Did you see the body?”

“Oh, no. My father’s in the security team here. Hm.” He squints into empty space. “That was probably a breach of confidentiality.”

“We won’t say a word,” Claude says. 

“I’d never compromise an investigation,” Dimitri says. Claude kind of wants to grab him by the face and push his cheeks together. 

Claude sips his tea—which is technically perfect, sweetened just the way he likes it—and examines Byleth carefully. He’s a professor, which Claude usually takes to mean someone at least over the age of twenty-six, but on closer inspection, Byleth doesn’t look much older than Claude or Dimitri. He wonders how, exactly, someone like Byleth could be a mercenary, a historian, and a professor all before he hits twenty-five.

“I was homeschooled,” Byleth says. Claude’s fingers tighten on his teacup. “And I might’ve lied on my papers when I signed up with the militia. People always ask eventually,” he adds, when Claude just stares.

“You weren’t with the _Fódlan_ military?” Dimitri asks.

“I’ve worked for a number of different people,” Byleth says. He glances at Claude. “From a number of places. Excuse me, I need to get the cake.”

He rises, and Claude and Dimitri stare at each other.

“The fuck,” Claude whispers. “Is he an assassin? A spy?”

“From where?” Dimitri whispers back. “Almyra?”

“He’s not one of _ours._ ”

“Oh.” Dimitri looks down. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have assumed—“

“We’ll deal with that later,” Claude hisses. “Besides, it’s not like you don’t have spies, either.”

“I’m not an assassin,” Byleth calls, from the kitchen. Claude and Dimitri freeze. “In case you were wondering. Your royal highness, if you could get the door, please.”

The doorbell rings.

Dimitri rises to his feet, giving Claude a curious look. Claude gestures to the bow, and Dimitri waves a hand at the sword.

“Or Dimitri,” Byleth calls. “Either is fine.”

Claude lurches for his tea and downs it, half praying that it’s poison, as Dimitri wanders in a bewildered state for the door. When he opens it, Claude chokes on his tea.

“Blaiddyd,” Professor Jeritza says. His hair is tied back with a fine black ribbon, and he’s still wearing the suit he had on for the improv show. He steps into the apartment as though he belongs there, and sets his cello case upright against the wall.

“Professor,” Dimitri says, in a faint voice.

“Hey, babe,” Byleth says. He’s carrying a plate of cake in both hands. “Dimitri, Claude, this is—“

“We’ve met,” Claude manages to say, between coughs.

Jeritza nods. “Yes, Dimitri is the one who wields his sword like a cudgel, and Claude is the one who thinks he’s playing poker when he should be watching his enemy’s torso.”

Ouch. “I’ll remember that for next time,” Claude says. 

“Is there a _reason_ they’re here?” Jeritza asks. He sits down, and Byleth drops a slice of cake next to his tea. 

“They’re asking if I killed Professor Lear,” Byleth says, sitting down next to him.

Claude and Dimitri both burst into frantic protests, but Jeritza silences them in his low, mournful tone. “He didn’t.”

“Of course,” Dimitri says.

“Never would’ve dreamed it,” Claude adds.

“The coroners put Lear’s death as sometime after six on the night before classes started,” Jeritza says. Claude and Dimitri nod like marionettes, and he takes a bite of cake. “Byleth was busy at the time.”

“Busy?” Dimitri says.

Byleth coughs into his fist. Jeritza glances at him sidelong.

“Oh,” Claude says. “ _Oh._ Right. Ha, so, ah, mystery solved, then. Good to know.”

“Hardly,” Professor Jeritza says.

“There’s still a murderer on the loose,” Byleth points out. He fixes them both with his eerie, cold-eyed gaze, and Claude shivers in a sudden chill. “Let’s just hope they’ve had their share of historians, or I may need to bring more knives to class. Now. Let’s have some cake.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (The following is a Text Interlude and contains images of text conversations)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A series of texts, concerning the events of the last chapter, below.

[](https://imgur.com/rc4qQUp)

[ ](https://imgur.com/DIoNlNL)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/Uo1Iu8M)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/KMTwUbT)  
[](https://imgur.com/3oKxvLI)

[ ](https://imgur.com/sub3CQ1)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/gbT7AFI)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/xWCCYjf)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/FFO6dH2)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/QGzwIt5)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/8tVgqDT)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/Jsqm5m5)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/HJNLM7m)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/t570nAv)  
[ ](https://imgur.com/W3lE3rB)  
[](https://imgur.com/golMnZc)


	5. Chapter 5

It’s not that Claude _wants_ to forget about the mugging and the dead body and the weird shit about people in masks, but college is busy and he’s very suddenly got a lot going on. He joins the Pegasus Club, makes friends with a bunch of Blue Lions and Black Eagles, and briefly considers joining the improv troupe just to make Lysithea’s head explode. 

Claude likes to think he has a talent for acting, given he’s sneakily attending school as just another Almyran instead of the Crown Prince. But he also has another significant thing to spend time on...which is what he’s doing right now, sprawled on top of Dimitri and kissing him senseless in his dorm room. 

Dimitri’s dorm isn’t really a dorm; it’s a house with a lot of little apartments, and Dimitri has a single room but the bed could definitely be larger. But it’s not like Claude minds lying on top of Dimitri. Far from it. 

It’s one of those days where they’re supposedly studying for history, but instead are kissing and lazily exploring each other while Claude wonders if they’re at a Good Blowjob Place. He really wants to be there. Dimitri’s cock is amazing and the thought of sucking it is enough to make Claude shiver on top of him, mouth on Dimitri’s neck. “Hey, question.” 

Dimitri’s big hand is on Claude’s naked back, stroking up and down, fingers tracing over muscles and the curve of Claude’s ass in his boxer-briefs -- currently the only thing he’s wearing, luckily Dimitri is so _warm_ that he’s not cold since, like every other place in this damned country, the old house-turned-apartment-building is drafty as fuck. 

“Is this going to be about murder,” asks Dimitri, tilting his head to give Claude more room to suck on his neck. 

Claude raises his head. “I -- no, it wasn’t, but now I gotta ask why you just thought it _would_ be about murder.” 

“We have talked a fair bit about murder,” says Dimitri. “You have to admit that.” 

Claude pushes up to brace himself on Dimitri’s shoulder and stares down at his maybe-probably?-boyfriend. “That last thing out of your mouth was _yes, Claude, I can feel how hard you are for me --_ \--” 

“Ah,” says Dimitri, who blushes every time Claude says something naughty and yet really was the first one to bring up murder while making out. “Well, I simply...am bad at this, aren’t I?” He draws Claude in and kisses him, deeply, making Claude’s brain go fuzzy and soft. 

“You’re actually really good at this,” Claude says, wriggling on top of him. “The dirty talk, we can work on it, but murder, usually not my thing.” 

Dimitri blushes again. “Please, what was your question?” 

“I was going to ask where we were on me sucking you off, but now I’m a little concerned about where your brain is,” Claude says with a grin. He’s only half-joking, but he’s on top of Dimitri and he can _feel_ what that does to him. 

“I would be, ah. Fine with that,” Dimitri says, breathless. “More than. I mean I...have. Thought of it and I...Claude, stop laughing.” 

“I can’t,” Claude says, grinning and kissing him soundly. “You’re the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how you’re six-foot-whatever and I watched you accidentally break a ballpoint pen in half while twirling it --” 

Dimitri winces. “Not my finest moment.” 

“And you play _rugby_ and when you’re covered in mud I think you look like some old-school warrior king and I got so hard I almost had to excuse myself and go jerk off in the woods--” 

“They might expel you for that,” Dimitri admonishes. “I’d rather take care of that for you.” 

“I mean, you could have tackled me and I would basically have come in my jeans.” Claude starts kissing down his neck, his chest. “I just meant you’re so fierce and hot and I heard you apologize to the lady in the dining hall for something someone else said when she told them they were out of saghert and cream.” 

“It was inexcusably rude, that student should have gotten there earlier if they -- oh.” Dimitri’s breath goes strange and rough as Claude kisses down his abdomen and lower, over Dimitri’s underwear and oh, the sight of him in those black and clingy boxer-briefs is straight out of Claude’s fantasies. Ditto his gorgeous cock. Ditto his _everything_. 

“Do you want me to?” Claude asks, breath spilling over his cock. It gets harder, swelling against the fabric. 

“Yes,” Dimitri breathes. “Please.” 

“Want to feel my mouth on you, huh?” Claude is stalling, just a bit. He doesn’t have _that_ much experience, and he doesn’t want to ruin this. Blow...blowing it, as it were. 

He breathes over the hard ridge of Dimitri’s erection, wetting the cotton. Maybe he’s stalling a little, but he’s also _definitely_ teasing. 

“Yes, please,” Dimitri says, again, so polite. Such a sweetheart, Claude’s maybe-boyfriend. 

“I want to taste you,” Claude says, sucking at the tip and thrilling at the hard shudder that runs through Dimitri’s big body when he does. “Want you to come in my mouth, down my throat --” he reaches up and tugs at the band of Dimitri’s underwear. He lifts his hips, but Claude maybe stalled a bit _too_ much because before he can pull them down, there’s a knock. 

“Dimitri, Felix and Sylvain are fighting over the PS4 again,” Annette says, sounding irritated. “Felix has been trying to defeat this dumb Taurus thing in Dark Souls for two _hours_ \--” 

“That’s an optional boss,” Claude mutters, against Dimitri’s thigh. 

“--and he was close this time but then Sylvain grabbed the controller so he could play _Sims 4_ \--” 

“This is not happening,” Dimitri says, to the ceiling. “ _No._ ” 

“And then Felix threw the controller at him and Sylvain tried to duck, but he knocked over Ashe’s iced tea, that giant gallon one he gets at the dining hall, and it spilled on that ancient laptop he won’t replace --” 

Claude lifts his head, staring up at Dimitri. 

“--and _then_ \--” 

“Hi, Annette!” Claude calls, loudly. 

A pause. And then, a very quiet, “ _Oh._ Dimitri why didn’t you say your boyfriend was here?” 

Boyfriend? Claude smiles. And then he keeps smiling. He can’t stop smiling, actually. 

“Because I can’t get a word in edgewise,” Dimitri says, but softly, and with a fond smile. He sighs. “It’s all right, Annette.” 

“Just, uh, Ingrid might be...sort of on her way to talk to you, too. Sorry!” Annette squeaks. “I can, um, tell her to come back but she’s...well, it’s about someone eating her leftover sandwich, and….” 

Dimitri bangs his head back on his pillow. “Do your Golden Deer do this to you, Claude?” 

“Why do you think I always come over _here_?” Claude says. “Yesterday, Lysithea chased Lorenz down the hall with a crystal full of _dark energy_ for accidentally throwing out a can of cheap icing in the dorm fridge. Lysithea eats it by the spoonful. The sugar-coma icing with the little dots in it? It’s called Funfetti. Which I might start calling Lysithea, actually. Huh. Funfetti. It might work.” 

Dimitri snorts. “That’s -- well. Ingrid’s sandwich had likely been in there a while.” He reaches down and strokes Claude’s hair, then says, loudly, “Annette, please tell Ingrid I have company and will speak with her about sandwich shenanigans later.” 

“Sure! Um. Sorry? Bye, Claude!” 

“Bye, Annette!” Claude grins up at Dimitri. “Boyfriend, huh.” 

“Is that all right?” Dimitri takes Claude’s hand. “Would you like to be my boyfriend?” 

Claude nearly swoons. “Yeah, I -- yeah.” He slides back up and kisses Dimitri. “I do. A lot. And now I _really_ want to finish what I started.” 

Dimitri kisses him, just a little too not-careful to make Claude shiver and grind down on top of him. He slides back down Dimitri’s body when they pull away, too eager to draw it out -- and half-afraid if he teases, they’ll end up with another interruption. He gets Dimitri’s underwear off, makes a pleased little sound at seeing his cock lying hard against those abs that feature in a lot of Claude’s favorite fantasies, and then strokes him lightly with his hand. 

“Tell me if you don’t like it, okay?” he says, glancing up at Dimitri. 

“I’m pretty sure that’s not possible, but I will,” Dimitri assures him. He’s watching Claude with his pretty blues all wide and blurry, his mouth parted, already breathing hard. 

“You can pull my hair a little, if you’re into that,” Claude offers, then uses his hand to position Dimitri’s cock and lowers his mouth, licking over it and taking the head into his mouth. 

Dimitri moans, fingers sliding immediately into Claude’s hair. “Oh, that feels -- oh.” 

Good, that sounds like he’s enjoying himself. Claude licks and sucks at Dimitri’s cock, which -- like the rest of him -- is large and a little intimidating, frankly, but it also tastes good and he likes the weight of it on his tongue. He puts his other hand on Dimitri’s stomach, stroking those strong defined abs that tense and flex while Claude sucks him. 

Watching Dimitri is almost as good as hearing him, tasting him. He falls back after a moment, gasping up at the ceiling, writhing just a little -- it’s amazing how quickly he falls apart for Claude, who is probably not even giving him the best blowjob because there is just so _much_ of him. 

“How am I doing?” he asks, after a moment, taking a quick breath. 

Dimitri peers down at him. “I can’t -- if I watch you it might be -- over too soon --” 

Claude grins. That’s good, then. Excellent. This is fun. He lowers his mouth again, and takes as much as he can and then takes a little _more_ and Dimitri’s big body shakes, his thighs tensing and Claude knows he’s close. He wants Dimitri to come in his mouth but doesn’t want to stop to tell him, so he just keeps sucking, bobbing his head, using his tongue and letting it get a little messy because it’s sex, it’s supposed to be, right? 

Dimitri’s fingers get very tight in his hair, his gasps get louder and he tugs on Claude’s hair with a desperate sort of sound, saying, “Claude, I’m -- so close, you should --” 

Claude knows exactly what he should do and that’s keep going, so he does -- and he drops his hand from Dimitri’s stomach to rub gently at his balls, curious as to if he can go lower, tease Dimitri’s hole but that seems like a thing he should ask, first. It’s enough, anyway; Dimitri doesn’t last long beyond a few more hard sucks and Claude choking again, and he comes with a shuddery moan that is maybe, possibly, the hottest sound Claude’s ever heard. 

He swallows reflexively and sits back, pleased with himself and patting Dimitri idly on the stomach while he stares down at him in satisfaction of a job well done. Dimitri is flushed and trembling a bit, one arm flung up over his eyes, breathing hard. 

“So, I --” 

He doesn’t get anything else out though, because Dimitri moves way faster than he should in his situation and grabs Claude, pulling him down and kissing him with a surprising amount of aggression for a guy who just came that hard. His tongue licks at his own taste in Claude’s mouth and it’s so _hot_ that Claude moans, aware he’s also just in his underwear and suddenly so hard that he’s grinding himself against Dimitri’s thigh and on edge before he realizes it. 

“Can I,” Dimitri says, but Claude’s so close he doesn’t think he can wait. 

He grabs Dimitri’s hand and practically shoves it under his boxer-briefs, and gasps out, “Sorry, too close, you’re too hot, fuck,” and Dimitri laughs his lovely, low, deep laugh and strokes him with perfect pressure, thumb gliding over the slick tip of his cock until Claude falls on him and gasps his release into Dimitri’s shoulder. 

“We’re pretty good at this,” Dimitri says, beneath him. 

“Yeah,” Claude wheezes. “You can suck me next time, I just. You were too hot. Mm.” He kisses at Dimitri’s neck. 

“Um, Claude? I. Don’t mean to be rude, but I have no idea what you just said.” 

“Huh?” Claude lifts his head, then realizes he’d forgotten and spoken in Almyran. “Oh, right. Sorry. I just came so hard I forgot what language we’re speaking. I said, you can suck me next time. If you want.” 

“I do want,” Dimitri says, and smiles at him - so sweet and affectionate and _open_ , that it occurs to Claude he is going to have to tell him who he really is. 

“I have to tell you something,” Claude says, before he can change his mind. “But maybe...not here. Think you could walk me home?” It sounds silly, old-fashioned, but he’s more comfortable divulging this without the Blue Lions around. Even if they’re busy fighting over sandwiches and video games, which is likely not that different than Claude’s own dormmates. 

“Of course, but is everything all right?” Dimitri climbs to his feet, going to the bathroom to get a clean towel; he has an attached private bathroom, the perks of being a prince who’s not hiding his status, apparently. 

Claude nods as he takes the damp towel, though he’s definitely going to need to do laundry when he gets back to his room. “Yeah, I just think I should probably tell you something if we’re gonna do the whole...boyfriend thing. It’s really okay,” he adds quickly, because Dimitri looks so concerned. “And it’s not about murder, either.” 

Dimitri gives a brief smile as he pulls on his sweatpants and a tank top, since for some reason he doesn’t think the weather is cold enough for a shirt with sleeves -- not that Claude is complaining. Claude gets dressed and drags one of Dimitri’s endless rugby sweatshirts out of his closet, pulling it on and deciding immediately that Dimitri isn’t getting it back. 

“Let’s go down the back stairs,” Dimitri says, as they leave his room. “Less chance of getting spotted.”

It turns out they _are_ spotted, but it’s by Dedue, who just nods and says nothing when Dimitri taps his finger against his mouth and nods toward the back door. Claude tosses Dedue a grateful smile as they leave. 

Claude waits until they’re near the fishing pond and relatively isolated before he tugs Dimitri over to a bench. “I promise I wasn’t keeping this from you for any like, nefarious reason or anything, but...you should, um, probably know who I am. There’s really no easy way to say it, so...hey, guess what, you’re not the only crown prince in town.” He gives a little half-bow. “Prince Khalid of Almyra, that is.” 

Dimitri blinks. Then he smiles. “Oh. I was worried for a moment you were going to tell me you were secretly married, or perhaps engaged.” 

“Nope, unless Dad tried to marry me off while I’ve been gone,” Claude jokes. “You’re not mad, are you? That I didn’t tell you before now.” 

“No, of course not. I assume you have your reasons, but does anyone know?” 

“The administration, and I’m assuming some of the faculty -- though Professor Byleth is weird enough he might have just guessed, I don’t know.” 

“I -- oh,” Dimitri says, flushing. “I implied your country hired him as an assassin. Wonderful, I’m not yet the king and already starting a war.” 

Claude laughs and takes his hand. “Nah, luckily your boyfriend isn’t the type to start a war over that kind of thing. Uh. Provided you still want me to be your boyfriend.” 

“Of course I do,” Dimitri promises, immediately. He’s studying Claude with intensity, then reaches out with his free hand and turns Claude’s face this way, and that. “I”ve seen photographs, but you look much different in formalwear and--ah, there he is.” He tilts Claude’s face just so. “The prince.” 

“Ugh.” This might be the top romantic moment of his whole life, which is silly and perfect all at once. “Yeah, we’re into traditional dress back home, so I’m not usually dressed down in photographs. Official ones, anyway.” 

“I’ve met your father, as it happens,” Dimitri says, and he drops Claude’s face but still keeps hold of his hand. “He was terrifying.” He laughs softly. “In a good way.” 

“Oh, believe me, I know. He’s a lot. He kept threatening to come move me into my dorm. Can you imagine him carrying in a mini-fridge and meeting _Lorenz_?” Claude shakes his head. “Anyway, I wanted to see what Fodlan was all about, since, you know, my mom is from here. From Derdriu, but you get what I mean. I just thought it might be easier this way.” 

“Your family doesn’t miss you?” Dimitri asks. 

“Well. Some more than others,” Claude says, shaking his head. “My half-brothers aren’t thrilled with me being crown prince, but they’re probably hoping I end up hit by a car or I slip doing a kegstand or something.” He smiles at Dimitri. “Thanks for understanding. I figured you would.” 

“Yes. I do often wish I could just be a college student, though I say that and when I’m interrupted by video game drama and sandwich shenanigans, I often think it might be nice to simply execute them for treason and enjoy a peaceful afternoon. I’m kidding, of course,” Dimitri adds, immediately, as if Claude would ever think he meant that. “We abolished the death penalty years ago.” 

“We did it first,” Claude can’t help pointing out. 

“Oh, I see how it is,” Dimitri teases, drawing their clasped hands up to kiss the back of Claude’s knuckles. “I would say that at the very least, we’re forming positive and friendly relations between our respective countries, are we not, Prince Khalid?” 

Hearing his real name in Dimitri’s lovely baritone makes Claude happier than it should -- and with it comes a pang, because boyfriends they may be, but the future holds the weights of their respective crowns, ruling countries that are nowhere near each other. But that’s a worry for another day, and for now -- there’s the setting sun, his sweet boyfriend who knows his real name and has promised to keep his secret, and a kiss to share by a pond…

And his phone, practically blowing up in his pocket. 

Claude tries to ignore it, but it vibrates _and_ rings, so he finally gives in and pulls away from his hot boyfriend and takes his phone from his pocket. “Sorry, someone’s sure in a...oh.” 

“Claude?” Dimitri asks. “Is everything all right?” 

“No,” Claude says, staring at his phone. “It’s Lorenz. Apparently, we’ve been robbed.” 

***

Claude stands in the middle of his dorm room, hands tucked in his pockets, and rocks his heels on the shattered glass of the balcony door.

“It wasn’t even locked,” he says, after a moment. “They didn’t need to break it.”

Dimitri hovers at the doorway, unsure. Claude’s room is technically a crime scene—they’re impeding the police’s progress with every step they take across the thin carpet—but even with Lorenz drafting an inventory on a math book in the hallway and Hilda taking pictures, it’s fairly clear to Dimitri that this isn’t just some kids breaking in to steal laptops and run.

“ _First Warning,_ ” Claude says. The words are scrawled backwards on the glass door—or they were, before it was broken—in smudged, glossy red lipstick. A few pieces of the message lay scattered at Claude’s feet, and he nudges them with his shoe.

Whoever left the message did more than just upturn the desk Claude shares with Lorenz and run off with their laptops. The desk lamp is broken, ripped out of the socket and discarded on the floor. The comforters are shredded to pieces as though they’ve been hacked with a knife, and books and papers litter the floor. Claude picks one up—A leatherbound book with Almyran script on the cover—and flips it to the back. There’s a photo there, tucked in the spine, and Claude sighs and slips it into his pants pocket.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri says. He takes a step into the room. “But we should preserve the scene until campus security gets here, at least.”

“Yeah.” Claude picks up some discarded clothes and bundles them under his arm. His expression is grave, more like the stern, proud figure he makes in his official press releases, and Dimitri suppresses a guilty thrill at the thought. Honestly, it’s not the time to be thinking of anything but the very real and present danger that the shattered door and ransacked room represents, but as Claude flexes his hands, Dimitri’s cock offers a proposition to his brain that it would be very nice to have those hands at his throat. Just for a minute.

Goddess. He must be coming down with something. A chronic case of unfairly attractive boyfriend, probably. Who just so happens to be the crown prince of Almyra.

Dimitri wraps an arm around Claude’s shoulders and tries _not_ to think about the way the set of his mouth or the swell of his muscles. “What do you think the warning is about?” he asks, in a low voice. There’s a crowd watching from the hall, practically the whole dorm huddled together with their phones at the ready. “If it was the murder, they’d go after Sylvain and Felix. They’re the ones who found the body.”

_That’s_ an unpleasant thought.

“Yeah, but we’ve been asking questions,” Claude whispers. “And it’s not just that. I, back when we were mugged, I took—“

“Hey, man.” A mountain of flannel rises from the crowd and claps Claude on the arm hard enough that Dimitri feels it. It’s Raphael, who the rugby coach has spent the last three years tearfully trying to recruit for varsity, but who mostly hangs out with that quiet one in the Golden Deer dorm, carrying his art bag around. “Saw something weird after the glass broke. I was on a video chat with Ignatz—“

“Wait,” says tiny Edelgard. Lysithea. _Lysithea._ “Aren’t you roommates?”

“Yeah?” Raphael says. “So?”

There’s a short silence.

“Anyways, caught this guy on camera. Thought it was a drama student, or one of Lysithea’s magic friends.”

“What the _hell._ ”

Raphael ignores Lysithea’s death glare and hands Claude his phone. Dimitri’s breath catches. There, in the corner of what looks like a selfie, is a blurry figure in black robes racing down the steps. Their hair is covered, and Dimitri can’t really place their shoes in the photo, but he _can_ see the telltale green, twisted sliver of a mask half turned to the camera.

“Fuck,” Claude whispers.

“So maybe it’s not the murder,” Dimitri says. “But the mugger was arrested, right?”

“I mean, I think so. Would Edelgard have pressed charges?” 

Dimitri shrugs, and Claude’s frown deepens slightly. Goddess, how is he going to survive international conferences in the future when _that’s_ his contemplative face? Dimitri’s going straight to hell. Next to Lorenz, Hilda pinches her lips together and looks down at her phone.

“You should stay with me tonight, regardless,” Dimitri says, and blushes as every person in the entire hall fixes him with an intense gaze. “It isn’t safe, and the draft…”

“I don’t know if I want to leave the dorm tonight, really,” Claude says. His voice sounds vague. Distant. “I’m not about to get chased off.”

“I am,” Lorenz says. “I’m not sleeping on broken glass tonight. I have a friend in town—“ Hilda snorts, but he doesn’t even glance her way, “and I _suppose_ he won’t be averse to you sleeping on the couch…”

“Your sacrifice is noted,” Claude says, dryly, and flashes a smile. “I knew you liked me.”

“I take it back,” Lorenz says.

“Look, I’m right across the hall,” says little Edelgard. “We can leave the door open in case whoever it is comes back. End of discussion.”

Claude’s eyes practically light up. “You’re inviting me into the _inner sanctum?_ ”

“Ugh. I’m regretting it already.”

Dimitri helps Claude move some of his clothes and books into what can be best described as what would happen if Mercedes’ inner goth were allowed to flourish, get _really_ invested in crystals, and wallpaper the room with questionable band posters. Claude’s dark mood almost lifts when he drops his clothes in a corner and takes a look around, and Lysithea gives Dimitri a deeply judgmental once-over before she declares that they can both sleep on the floor.

“Since his majesty’s not gonna want to leave you alone,” she says, clearing a cloth handkerchief full of herbs off her desk. Her desk doesn’t look like the dorm-issued fake wood, either—It’s a classic princess desk, with ornate carvings on the drawers and a faint lavender sheen on the back. 

“Thank you,” Dimitri says, “but I can always—“

“Stay,” Claude says, in a short, low voice that _does_ things to Dimitri in ways he rather wishes it wouldn’t, because he’s currently sitting on a rug shaped like the cat from Sailor Moon, which he only knows about because Edelgard went through a bit of a phase in middle school. 

And because he may have watched three seasons back to back.

“I’m gonna see what’s taking campus security so long,” Lysithea says. She squints at them. “Don’t. Touch anything. Especially each other. I don’t want my shit infused with horny college boy sex magic.”

“Lysithea, I’d never,” Claude says, but Lysithea just stares. 

“We’ll be respectful of your space,” Dimitri says. “Thank you for your generosity.”

“Hm.” Lysithea twirls on her heel and stalks out the door, leaving Claude and Dimitri alone, surrounded by crystals and screaming punk bands.

“Right,” Claude says, when the door closes. “About the mugger.” His eyes are a darker green like this, in the dim light of little Edelgard’s covered lamps. Dimitri wonders what he’ll look like when he’s crowned. How the gold will catch his eyes.

“Hey.” Claude snaps his fingers, and Dimitri _certainly_ feels that, oh _Goddess._ He crosses his legs and tries to focus. “You okay?”

“Mmm,” Dimitri says. “Yes. Absolutely. I mean, no, you’ve been robbed and that’s terrible.”

Claude gives him a look. It’s entirely too smug, and it reminds Dimitri of that afternoon, when Claude had Dimitri’s cock in his mouth, making those _sounds—_

“No horny college boy sex magic, Dimitri.”

“Oh, hells.”

Claude smiles. “Okay. So. Gonna have to remember that, but about the mugger. I might’ve, uh, taken something from them.”

Dimitri feels like he’s just stepped into a winter downpour. “What? That’s tampering with evidence!”

“Yeah, well, chalk it up to Almyran customs.” It’s a terrible lie, but Dimitri isn’t really as upset as he ought to be, so Claude continues, taking out his phone. “Got some photos of the mugger’s face and his mask. That might be what they were after—his eyes were open for a second, see? And I took this, but it looks like whoever broke in didn’t think to look in a book of Almyran poetry.” He hands over a creased photo on glossy magazine paper. It’s a hand, clutching the arm of a chair. “Don’t know what it was, cause the crease is right over the hand, but—“

“It’s my father,” Dimitri says. His stomach feels weighted with _lead._ “There’s a ring on his hand, you can’t see it well, but…” he twists his signet ring around so Claude can get a better look.

“The mugger asked for our jewelry,” Claude says. “You don’t think he was after your ring?”

“This is used to stamp my correspondence,” Dimitri says, in a deadened voice, as the weight of this hits him. “It’s been in my family since the start of our line. It’s what we use to signify our legitimacy to rule.”

“And around the same time someone tries to steal your ring, our old history prof gets pushed into the woods.” Claude takes the paper back and slips it in his pocket again. “Maybe they’re connected, somehow. We only got this warning when we started asking about the murder, anyways.”

“We should tell the authorities,” Dimitri says.

“Sure.” Claude looks down at Dimitri’s hand and takes it, sliding his fingers over the signet ring. He brushes Dimitri’s knuckles, his eyes gone dark as an oak forest after a storm, and smiles. “But if they think this little stunt’s going to stop me from finding out what they’re up to, then they _really_ don’t know me.”

***

The things Hilda does for love.

Or, kind of love. She _likes_ Claude, anyways, and yeah, maybe she _did_ keep a poster of Prince Khalid from Teen Alliance Magazine up on her wall until her dad made her tear it down, and maybe she _did_ consider like, taking a study abroad term in high school for the sole purpose of seducing him to get _back_ at her dad, but that was way too much work. And that was mostly spite, anyways, and the fact that he had that long, braidable hair and wore a lot of capes.

Whatever. The point is, he’s not on her wall anymore. He’s currently crashing in _Lysithea’s_ room because some weird-ass muggers can’t take a hint, which means Hilda’s here, in the Black Eagles dorm, staring up at a million miles of goth in a _polo._

“How did you get here,” Hubert says. The polo is definitely not his. For one, it’s red. For another, it has a monogrammed _F_ on the sleeve, it’s untucked, which she’s pretty sure is a cardinal sin for all Huberts, and it’s just a little too big for him besides. Which. Okay. Get it, Hubert. But he also needs to get _out,_ which just isn’t happening.

“I walked in,” Hilda says. Behind Caspar, sure, but it counts. “I have to talk to Edelgard. It’s important, or trust me, I wouldn’t be here.”

“You can leave a message,” Hubert says. His hair is mussed slightly, and Hilda glances behind her to the room Hubert materialized from. She can just see a shock of reddish hair through the crack in the door.

“Is that Ferdinand’s shirt?” she asks. “Nice.”

Hubert doesn’t even blush. It’s probably the pound of makeup. There’s no way anyone maintains that level of smokey-eye naturally. “I’ll show you to the door.”

“Wait. Look, hold on—“ Hilda scowls as Hubert takes her by the arm, and flexes with an aggrieved sigh. Hubert’s fingers rise as her muscles swell, and she grabs his wrist and twists him around. He thumps against the wall, and Ferdinand’s door widens.

“Ten years of mandatory self defense classes had to be good for something,” she says, and stops as Edelgard’s door swings open. Ferdinand is at Hubert’s side, saying something about pressing charges, but Edelgard just looks at Hilda, lingering on her biceps.

“We need to talk,” Hilda snaps. Edelgard brushes back long white hair from her eyes.

“Get in.”

Hilda storms into the room. She demands answers. She gets them. She goes back to Claude.

Except she does none of those things, because the first thing Edelgard does after Hilda enters is get her hands all over Hilda’s shoulders, her arms, pressing down her top just enough so Hilda’s breasts push up over the neckline, and then Hilda’s biting Edelgard’s neck and _really,_ this is starting to get _pathetic._

“I said we need to talk,” Hilda reminds her, as they stumble back over a long black jacket or dress or whatever pooling on Edelgard’s floor. It gets shoved under the bed by one of Hilda’s heels, and Edelgard pushes her down on the bed.

“Fine.”

And they do, though it’s mostly, _Fuck you, you know where my fucking clit is,_ and _stop closing your thighs_ and _put some fucking effort into it, Hilda._

Which is unfair, really, because riding Edelgard’s strap is murder on the thighs, even with Edelgard fucking up into her, and Hilda’s panting and sweaty and too focused on holding herself up on the wall to get herself off. Finally, _finally,_ Edelgard gets Hilda on her hands and knees and fucks her properly, with Hilda writhing on the sheets with one hand shoved under her, furiously working her clit.

“This is the last time,” she says, when she’s shakily throwing her dress back on, shoving her boobs back into place with more ferocity than the poor, sore things are owed. Edelgard lies naked on the mess they’ve made of the bed and raises a brow. “Seriously.”

“Mm.” Edelgard pulls a book down from the shelf next to her bed. “Alright. If you could go out by the fire escape, though? I have a reputation to maintain.”

Hilda whirls around. “You know _what,_ ” she says, and Edelgard smiles slowly as Hilda climbs back onto the bed, pink hair sticking to her shoulders and cheeks, to kiss that smug grin right off her face.

***

[Sylvain] hey felix   
[Sylvain] felix   
[Sylvain] FELIX 

Felix glances from where he’s trying to finish a paper at his desk at his phone, which continues to vibrate with notifications from Sylvain. He ignores it as long as he can, then picks it up, scowls, and deliberately turns it off before tossing it on his bed and resolutely going back to his paper. All that’s left is the conclusion. Sylvain can’t be that drunk if he’s spelling Felix’s name correctly. And Felix is still a little annoyed at him for that whole 3 am no-pants drunk incident. 

_Therefore, as you can see, arming a tomb with death traps based on ancient technology isn’t a surefire way to keep anything safe. It’s probably better that you just don’t die with anything people want, or don’t build yourself an ostentatious tomb that will entice people to rob you. Or just leave your shit on the lawn because who cares, you don’t need to safeguard it with a rusty blade or a spike wall, because you’re dead._

He wonders if he should change that to _just leave your stuff on the lawn_ instead of _just leave your shit on the lawn_. Professor Byleth doesn’t seem the type to be offended by word choice. 

Something knocks against his window, startling Felix from his final read-through. He frowns, wondering if he’s just hearing things. All of them have been a little on edge since that whole murder thing. 

Which makes Felix glance guiltily at his phone on his bed. He sighs and navigates to his email to send the paper, but hears the sound at his window again. And again. It sounds like….is someone throwing _rocks_ at his _window_? Is he in some kind of teen movie? No. Fuck that. 

Felix hits _send_ , stands up and grabs his phone before peering out of the window. It’s not quite nine, and Felix’s bedroom is on the back of the house facing the deck. On which stands Sylvain in a spill of light, tilting his head up and grinning. Felix’s mouth goes a little dry. He hates how good-looking Sylvain is in these sorts of moments, when he’s not even _trying_. He looks good when he _does_ try, too, but Felix is usually too irritated at him when he does that to notice. 

But the cold white light from the outdoor security bulb makes his hair look bright as blood against his snow-pale skin, and that grin on his face would have Felix’s heart-rate kicking up a few beats if it weren’t for the girl pressed up against Sylvain’s side, with Sylvain’s arm around her. 

It’s not that Felix hated the girls that slept with Sylvain. That was regressive and problematic, it wasn’t _their_ fault Sylvain had to get drunk to do it. And Felix knew, because Sylvain told him, that Sylvain didn’t fuck nearly as many women as people probably thought he did. “There’s a lot of other fun stuff you can do, you know,” he’d said with a sly grin, but Felix had remained obstinately silent, disinterested in the technicalities. Sylvain said he often abstained from full-out sex with a woman because he was too worried about getting her pregnant and being “stuck”, but Felix … well, maybe that was part of it, but he had his doubts that was the whole story. 

Either way, it made him angry to see stupid Sylvain with a girl and a grin, waving his phone up at Felix. And he knows why, and that it shouldn’t make him mad - it’s not like he has any claim on Sylvain, and it’s not like Sylvain even knows Felix -- 

Ugh. 

Felix considers ignoring the clear _pick up your phone_ signal, but in the end, he caves and switches it back on. Sylvain’s text messages are a barrage of his name with the most recent setting his teeth on edge -- _help me Dedue is in the common room and I gotta get this cutie upstairs w/o him seeing me!!! Pls Felix help your bro out!! She’s so hot!_

Felix shouldn’t. In fact, he types _no_ , then erases it and types _you don’t even like her_ and _stop pretending, it’s killing me and I hate it and it’s going to make me hate your stupid face_ , except he only gets to _stop pretend_ before he scowls and sends _fine_ before heading down the back steps. 

The back door to the Blue Lion House - so called because Dimitri and Sylvain bought it to satisfy security requirements for the prince to live on-campus - is accessible only from the inside; it’s something of an emergency door that needs a code to be opened. Felix punches in the code -- it changes monthly, and this month it’s Dimitri’s birthday, which is the stupidest code that Felix has ever heard, what is the point of a code if it’s so fucking easy? -- and yanks the door open. 

Sylvain and his date tumble through the doorway, apparently having been leaning against it to make out while they waited. Sylvain looks not _drunk_ but not sober, either; he flashes that unholy grin at Felix and says, “See, baby, told you he’d come through.” 

The girl is pretty, he supposes, though Felix is not an expert by any means. Sylvain swears up and down his only type is “hot and fun”, but Felix has noticed the ones he brings home to his room are always the same; slender and athletic with long dark hair, usually wearing thigh-high boots and matte red lipstick. 

“Hi,” the girl says. She has a throaty sort of voice, low and a little husky. 

“Baby,” Sylvain says, which Felix knows means he’s forgotten her name, “This is Felix. I told you he kinda looks like he could be your brother, huh.” 

“Mm,” the girl says, moving up into his space. Sylvain also apparently likes them aggressive. “He does. You really are a hottie, wanna join us? I’ve never had a threesome with a boy who kinda looks like me, before.” 

“No,” says Felix, then turns and marches up the stairs. He doesn’t understand why he lets this get to him. Sylvain is not stupid, he’s not as oblivious as he seems, and if those things are true then he has to know what this _does_ to Felix and just doesn’t care. It should be enough to make him stop caring. Maybe it will get to that point eventually. 

Part of Felix wishes it would just happen already, that Sylvain will finally just say _I know you’re into me and I don’t care and I’ll never admit I don’t want any of these women so just give up hoping and transfer to Derdriu like you were going to do last semester when I fucked a girl in your bed and said it was an accident_. 

“Felix --” 

“I let you in, that’s all you’re getting out of me,” Felix snaps, once they’re out of the stairwell and onto the Dedue-free second floor. 

“That’s a shame,” the girl coos. 

Felix hears Sylvain laughing when he slams into his room. His fingers go into his hair and pull -- he hates this, so much. Hates Sylvain for being so cruel, and if Felix is wrong and Sylvain _is really that stupid and oblivious_ , Felix hates him for that, too. 

Maybe he’ll go for a run. It’s not _that_ late. But instead, Felix sits on the edge of his bed. And he hates himself because he knows what he’s doing, he swore he wasn’t going to do this again and yet. Felix calls himself every vicious name he knows and reaches up to the vent over his bed, pushing it open. He noticed this early on as freshmen, that he and Sylvain had their beds pushed up against the same wall. And that if Sylvain’s vent was open, and Felix’s was...it was an old house. Sound traveled. 

He lays back, and realizes his cock is half hard. He can’t hear yet, but he thinks about Sylvain slowly stripping down to his boxer-briefs, his cock pressing against the fabric, pressing his lover down on the bed. Who isn’t Felix -- he hasn’t crossed that line in this fantasy, yet, but he will, if past experiences are anything to go by -- but who isn’t the girl, either. 

Felix rubs a hand over his cock, through the fabric of his sweatpants. He can hear mumbling and little giggles, and it makes him scowl because that’s not what he wants to hear -- 

_None of this is what you want to hear. What are you doing? Why are you doing this again? You swore you wouldn’t after the last time._

He hears Sylvain’s low laugh, and then something that sounds like Sylvain moaning, and that’s enough to get Felix’s eyes closing and his hand sliding beneath his sweatpants to stroke his hardening cock. 

He wants it to be Sylvain stroking him, wants to be making Sylvain moan, wants to be the one pressing kisses to Sylvain’s skin and holding his wrists down over his head. Sylvain would like it if Felix took control. Forced him to lay there, present and aware of just who it was making him hard, making him moan, making him come. Would ride Sylvain’s cock, maybe put a hand around Sylvain’s neck while he did it. Make Sylvain _behave_. 

Felix pushes his sweatpants down, hastily, getting his hand back on his cock so he can stroke it harder and faster, his fantasy spinning and now it is him, of course, in the bed with Sylvain. 

There’s sounds now that he can hear, gasps and moans, maybe sucking or kissing -- but the girl’s are louder, and that’s what makes Felix ashamed of himself for getting off and pretending the person with Sylvain is him. Because it’s not, it’s a girl, and it’s one who clearly is enjoying herself if her loud cries are any indication. Which he can’t be mad about, because that’s not fair to _her_ and Felix hates this, he hates it so much. 

Felix is hard and aching, but he’s also angry and dissatisfied, and he can’t do this. He flails his hand out and gets his phone, then half-rolls over and grabs for the lube under his bed and his earbuds. He connects them to his phone and pulls up some porn, some stupid video he watches when he needs to come and fast; it’s hot, a slender-built dark-headed guy pinning down a redhead and riding him, hard, everything Felix wants but can’t have. He shuts his brain off and gets his hand slick, then strokes himself almost brutally fast until the friction and the sounds of the dark-haired guy saying _you want me to move, you tell me how good it feels_ , the redhead panting, _please, please, so good, fuck, please move_ , being absolutely wrecked by the man on top of him. 

It’s good for a few seconds; the orgasm hits him quick and hard, shudders over him and fuzzes out his brain. But it’s fleeting and gone too soon, leaving him a mess and panting, face sweaty, dissatisfied because it’s not what he wants. And he can’t _have_ what he wants, so…

With a frustrated growl -- and aware the sounds are still coming through the vent -- Felix gets up, cleans himself up and ties his hair back, puts on fresh underwear and sweatpants and a tank he thinks he might have stolen from Dimitri because it’s way too big. If he’s going to be frustrated, he might as well go play Dark Souls. 

Before he leaves his room, he closes the vent and ignores the little thrill he gets hearing Sylvain’s moan -- this isn’t for him, it’s never going to be for him, and maybe the sooner he realizes this, the better. 

Felix is halfway down the hall when he realizes he’s left his phone in his room. He’s just scooped it up and is heading back for the common room when Sylvain’s door opens, and his guest for the evening comes storming out, pulling on a tank top just quick enough to avoid giving Felix a show. 

“Aw, come on, don’t be like that,” Sylvain calls from his room. 

The girl catches sight of Felix and says, “You busy, cutie? I bet you’re not as much of a dick as your friend, who can’t even remember my name!” 

“I’m gay,” Felix says, flatly. 

“Of course you are,” she huffs. She tosses her hair -- she’s actually gorgeous in a temper, which Felix appreciates on an aesthetic level even if he wishes he could make his feet move and wasn’t rooted the spot, watching this play out like one of Annette’s terrible improv performances -- and faces Sylvain’s open room with her hands on her hips. “For the record, my name isn’t _baby_ , and it isn’t _Felicia_ or _Beatrix_ or whatever you were mumbling, it’s _Lilah_. Fuck _you_.” 

With that, she whirls on Felix. “Show me how to get out of here, please.” 

Felix shows her. She’s furiously texting as she leaves, and Felix shuts the door and thinks about going to his room -- but instead he goes into the common room instead and picks up the game controller, switching on the TV and booting up the PS4 to play Dark Souls. 

Dedue, calmly reading a book, glances up at him. “What happened?” 

Felix rolls his eyes and says nothing. He doesn’t think he needs to rat Sylvain out, even though Sylvain probably deserves it. 

“Hmm.” Dedue goes back to his book, and Felix settles in for some infuriating gaming -- a plan which is derailed entirely when Sylvain enters the common room, messy-haired in only a pair of tight boxer briefs. 

“Ugh,” Sylvain says, falling on the couch next to Felix. Too close, all warm _bare_ skin and his knee touching Felix’s, and Felix keeps thinking about what that girl said, _my name isn’t Felicia or Beatrix_ and the way she’d looked, dark haired and lean, pale skin and angry flashing eyes. “I fucked that one up. I mean. We just met! I bet she can’t even spell my name.” 

Felix’s jaw tenses. “You’re an idiot. I don’t know anything about girls but that’s less awful than not knowing hers.” 

“Yeah. Probably.” Sylvain puts his arms behind his head and grins over at him. “She thought you were hot, though.” 

“Great.” Felix focuses on the game, but he’s already dead, of course. Scowling, he restarts and waits for the loading screen. 

“I mean, I know you’re not into it but--” 

“I think you should probably let Felix play his game,” Dedue says, in his deep, calm voice. 

Sylvain bumps Felix’s knee with his. “He’s used to it. I’ve been bothering him while he’s gaming since he was playing Animal Crossing on a GameCube.” 

“That was Dimitri, not me,” Felix huffs, leaning forward. “Can’t you sit somewhere else? Plenty of furniture.” He tries to ignore how warm Sylvain is, how...half-naked he is, how Felix came so hard thinking about pinning him down and -- 

_You Died_ , the game says. 

“Wow, that was fast,” Sylvain says, cheerfully, as if he’s not responsible for Felix’s utter distraction. He throws his legs -- his muscular, bare legs -- up over Felix’s lap. “C’mon, my girl left so I need you to entertain me better than this!” 

Felix shoves Sylvain’s legs off his lap, throws the controller down, gets up and heads for the stairs. He can’t handle this anymore. 

“Felix, aw, come back! We could play some Dissidia! I’ll let you be Squall and I won’t even make fun of you for it,” Sylvain calls with a laugh. 

Felix doesn’t know why he can’t just make himself have any chill when it comes to Sylvain, but it’s asking way too fucking much to sit there with him still _half-hard_ and draping his gorgeous body all over Felix, who is so over it, it isn’t even funny. He is going to go upstairs right now and tell the fucking king of Faerghus to exile Sylvain Gautier forever. At least from the common room. 

“Dimitri!” Felix calls. He’s not entirely sure that Dimitri doesn’t have a guest, himself, now that he seems to be dating the kid from their fencing class, Claude. And it’s strange -- he and Dimitri have fucked around in the past, a few times, and he’s actually _happy_ for Dimitri, even if Felix isn’t so sure he trusts this von Riegan because he doesn’t tend to do that easily. 

Dimitri’s door isn’t closed, so Felix pushes it open. “Dimitri?” 

A rush of cold air winds around him, bringing the scent of pine needles and damp earth. It feels like the air before a storm, heavy and wet, the brief hint of ozone raising the hair on his arms. He takes a step into the room.

On the other side of Dimitri’s open window, a figure in a twisted green mask stares up at him.

Felix goes hot. It’s as if the breeze ruffling the masked figure’s robes has stirred a furnace in him, blazing through his nerves, rippling across his skin. Felix shouts something—wordless, guttural—and the figure drops from the window, gloved fingers sliding on the glass.

“Felix?” Sylvain’s voice is close behind him, but Felix barely registers it. He’s operating on instinct, now—Centuries of Fraldarius nobility surging in the back of his brain, dukes who didn’t fuck around with matters of state politics and tabloids but earned their title in the churned earth of distant battlefields. Shields of the king, they’d been called, and even though Felix thinks it’s bullshit most of the time, it’s as though a switch has been flicked in his brain because that was _Dimitri’s_ room that masked thief was breaking into, that was his _king,_ how _dare_ they—

He’s out the window before Sylvain can stop him. 

Dimitri’s on the second floor, which means Felix has a split second of mind-numbing panic before he scrabbles at the drain to slow his fall. He scrapes his fingers red as he lands with a bone-shaking thump on the grass below, but the masked figure, whoever they are, must be an expert at breaking and entering, because they’re already booking it across the driveway. 

Felix takes off after them.

It hits him, as he vaults a fence into the small, residential side of town, that Dimitri mentioned a mask when he talked about the mugging. A mask and a cloak. So whoever was back in the alley of the Abyss then probably had accomplices, and they probably _were_ after Dimitri after all. Felix snarls as the thief lurches into a copse of trees in an undeveloped lot, and flings himself into the underbrush just as he remembers.

A man was murdered in the woods by the science building.

He can still see Sylvain’s pale face as he stared at the body that had once been their history professor. He can still see the rigid way Professor Lear’s hands were curled into claws near his neck, like he was trying to ward off a blow. The wound in the back of his skull, the way it seemed to… to _sink_ in on itself…

He stops. The trees are quiet. Shadows ring around him—branches, green leaves, bark carved into the shape of a face—and he howls in outrage as something hooks under his ankle and he goes sprawling on his back.

A mask appears, shrouded in black cotton. A hand grips his throat.

_No._

He kicks out when the first blow connects. His jaw burns, but the attacker goes rolling in the leaf litter when he shoves his knee between their legs, and Felix throws himself on top of them. They growl—their voice is low, he has to remember that—and try to hit him again, but he twists his head to the side and their fist slides off. He twists their mask, and they yowl like a wounded cat.

“You fuckers,” Felix hisses, wrenching at the mask. “You think you can _touch_ him?”

“Wasn’t trying to—“ they say, muffled under the mask, but Felix can’t catch the rest, because a firm hand grips the back of his collar and flings him into a tree. He gasps, winded, and blinks at two, no, no, _three_ masked people converging on him from the shadows of the trees.

“No,” one of them whispers. “He’s a duke. We can’t afford this.”

“Accidents happen,” another says, and Felix curls his hands into fists. He snakes around the tree and pushes off into a dead run, trying to ignore the thump of footsteps behind him.

Twice, he feels the brush of fingers at his collar. Harsh breaths pant behind him, and the footsteps don’t fade, don’t flag, even when Felix’s breath comes short and his legs start burning. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know these streets—one might lead up the hill, maybe, back to the Blue Lions house, but everything’s starting to blur, and he doesn’t think he can make it all the way up. A pair of headlights blaze over the crest of the hill, and Felix can hear the footsteps rapidly disappear, like prey scampering into the woods at the sight of a hunter. Felix just stands there, frozen, terror and fury washing over him in waves, as the lights fill his vision.

“Felix!” A door opens before the car can roll to a stop, and a tall figure unfolds from the back. “Felix, get in.”

“Sylvain,” Felix says.

“Grab him.” That’s Dedue, a dim shape in the driver’s seat. Sylvain grabs Felix by the arm and drags him bodily into the car, where he falls against him like a sack of grain. Sylvain wraps his arms around him, hauls Felix up against his chest in the backseat, and Felix stares numbly out at the dark neighborhood beyond the window.

“It’s alright,” Sylvain says. He holds Felix tight, hands grasping, as though he’ll go sliding out of the car if he dares to let go. “We’ve got you, Felix. You’re safe.”

Felix laughs, and it comes out hollow. “No,” he says. “No, I don’t think we are.”


	6. Chapter 6

It’s remarkable, really, how easy it is for a college campus to explain away attempted regicide. What starts out with Felix quietly answering questions from wary police officers at the steps of the Blue Lions house leads to an uproar of false rumors following him across the quad. Overnight, the story evolves into Felix chasing a paparazzi down the street, to a late night drunken fight, to cults, to an attempted assassination by Annette’s _dad,_ of all things. It’s almost dizzying to step out of the now heavily-guarded house and hear people cheerfully describing the exploits of some other person wearing his face.

He wakes in the night a few times the next evening, and he starts taking his pillow out to the couch, where he falls asleep with his laptop fan roaring and his boots propped up on the arm of the couch. Ingrid joins him after the second night, but she doesn’t say anything; She just sits there, the way she used to when Felix was a kid and would stumble behind his brother, too young to play but too old to be left alone. She used to sit on the swings out back and hold his hand, her eyes calm and watchful, and there’s something of that in her eyes now, even with Glenn gone and Ingrid throwing herself full-tilt into the world of their parents, the world Felix would rather leave behind.

A world where masked people climb into a prince’s room not two years before his coronation.

Dimitri brings Claude over more. They’re always together, now, and Felix _is_ happy for them, but he wonders how serious they’re taking this, or if they’re too wrapped up in each other to notice. Except Dimitri starts wandering down to the common room sometimes, too, and Sylvain, until nearly the whole house is sprawled out on comforters and pillows every night, kicking up a fuss and making it hard for Felix to focus on anything, let alone the feeling of tree bark under his nails and the sound of footsteps thumping behind him.

Which is how they all are on the night Sylvain gets the call. He’s sprawled over Felix and Dedue, wearing sweatpants Annette screen-printed for his birthday that say _Are You Respectable_ on the ass, when he jumps and scowls down at his phone. Ingrid shoots Felix a look—an old look, one they’ve perfected by the age of ten—and Felix knows before Sylvain even straightens his shoulders that it’s Margrave fucking Gautier on the other line.

“Yes sir,” Sylvain says.

Dimitri stiffens. No one else takes any notice, except for Dedue, who is too watchful for his own good.

“No, sir,” Sylvain says. His voice must sound off, somehow, because Annette and Mercie glance over from where they’re playing a phone game together, and Ashe gives Dedue a look before Dedue carefully shakes his head. “That wasn’t me, sir, Felix saw—I wouldn’t climb into windows in my own place—“ His mouth twists. “Sorry. No. I wasn’t trying to be insub—No, I can’t, Felix is, he was attacked. He was attacked, I can’t just leave.”

Dimitri shifts in his seat, like he’s about to rise, and Ingrid touches his arm.

“Yes, sir. No. He doesn’t need to pick me up— _Fuck._ ” He drops his phone in his lap and runs his hands down his face. It’s like he’s dragging a mask over his eyes—One moment he’s tense, tightly-wound and hard-eyed, and the next, he has a bright, false smile and an easy slump to his shoulders. “Sorry, guys. I wish I could keep gracing your lives with my illuminating presence, but duty calls. Dad’s summoning me home for family time.”

“Oh,” Annette says, in an odd voice. She glances at Felix. “That’s. Nice.”

“Yeah, he’ll probably try and get me to change my major again.” Sylvain rolls to his feet. “I mean, can you imagine someone like me in a suit, running a Fortune 500? Yeah, no thanks.”

“I can pull rank,” Dimitri starts to say, but Sylvain just blows him off. 

“I know how much you hate that, your highness,” he says. He grins when Dimitri grimaces slightly. “See? I can read you like a book. Nah, it’s no big.”

“I’ll come with you,” Felix says.

The look Sylvain gives Felix is cold, glassy. “Don’t wanna put you through that, Fee. We all know you and my brother don’t get along, and he’s the chauffeur.”

Felix’s chest tightens. He remembers Sylvain climbing over the fence between their sprawling estates, his hair a mess, mud in his clothes, his skin a patchwork of bruises. _He plays rough, that’s all,_ Sylvain used to say. _All boys do._ Even though Sylvain was the sort of boy who gingerly rescued frogs from the sidewalk and tied Dimitri’s shoes for him, who was always so unerringly polite to Felix’s parents. Felix’s dad would smile at him, just smile, and for Sylvain, it was like he’d brought down the sun. Then Miklan would come over to drag Sylvain back, yanking on his arm so tight his knuckles whitened, and if anyone asked, Sylvain would just shrug.

_It’s okay, Felix,_ he’d say. _It’s not like I don’t deserve it._

“I’m coming with you anyways,” Felix says. He storms up to his room. “Don’t leave without me.”

Except Sylvain does, of course. He’s gone by the time Felix stumbles down the stairs, and the others stare at Felix for a moment before glancing away, just as a red convertible screams out of the drive.

Sylvain doesn’t come back for the rest of the weekend.

“They’re probably renting a house,” Dimitri says, unprompted, when Felix throws his controller down on Saturday night. Claude is tangled up in Dimitri’s legs, watching without looking like he’s watching, and Dimitri is unconsciously stroking Claude’s hair. Something about it sets Felix’s teeth on edge, and he can’t say why. “We can drive around, look for the car.”

But that’ll probably just make it more awkward than it has to be, so Felix just groans and looks at his phone. Sylvain hasn’t texted him back much at all, just a few pithy remarks about how he’s glad he got his mother’s genes because _yikes,_ but that’s not much to go by.

He nearly yelps when his phone _does_ ring the next day, when Dimitri and Claude are off doing their happy couple bullshit and Dedue is cooking with Ashe in the kitchen like a lovestruck couple from one of Mercie’s romcoms. He picks it up as soon as he sees Sylvain’s name on the screen, and walks over to the other end of the room.

“Sylvain?”

“Oh, hey.” It’s a woman’s voice, light and a little hesitant. Behind her, Felix can hear the chatter of a crowd, the dull beat and thump of bass. “Is this, um, Felix?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. Um, your friend Silvie, he’s, here? At the Abyss? I think maybe someone needs to bring him home, but I don’t really know him and you’re the first person on his phone, so.”

“Shit.” Felix grabs his sweater from the couch and starts tugging it on. “How bad is he?”

“He’s just kind of really drunk,” the woman says. “I mean, drunk enough to let me steal his phone. I’ve just seen this kind of thing before. He’s shirtless, if that helps.”

“Alright, I’m coming.” Felix waves off Dedue, who has his hand wrapped around Ashe’s like that’s going to do anything about the scallions, and pushes his way into the freezing night air.

He walks to the Abyss. He doesn’t even think about masked thieves in the shadows, not really, not when his heart is thudding hard in his chest and all he can think is what Sylvain’s going to look like, how trashed he’ll be, whether he—How long he’d been out. Felix’s breath puffs in great clouds as he walks, and when he gets to the Abyss, the bouncer looks him up and down and frowns slightly before letting him in.

Sylvain isn’t hard to miss. For one thing, he’s in the cage. He’s stripped off his shirt, which a woman is holding in that awkward way one does when one doesn’t know where to put something down and the floors are all vaguely sticky, and he’s unbuttoning his pants in a slow, fumbling way he probably thinks is seductive. But Felix can see the scrape of a cut on his upper lip, and there’s a yellowish mark next to his ear, too close to his jaw for comfort. Felix touches his own fading bruise, and his stomach churns. 

“Okay,” he says. He approaches the cage, and Sylvain tries to grind on the bars, which—It shouldn’t be attractive, because he’s just kind of bumping into it, but his pants are shoved a few inches down over his hips, and he looks back at Felix under half-lidded eyes and bites his lower lip like he knows what he’s doing. Felix snarls under his breath and swings the cage open.

“Out,” he says.

“Aw, baby, I’m not done,” Sylvain drawls. He staggers out when Felix grabs him by the belt loop. “Mm. Like a girl who can take control. Hey, hey, you gonna take a turn?” 

“No. I’m taking you home,” Felix says. Sylvain blinks at him slowly, and he tugs at his belt. “Now.”

“Bossy, bossy.” Sylvain insinuates himself at Felix’s side. “I like you. You’ve got, the, the eyes right. Most of them don’t get the eyes right.”

“Uh huh.” 

Sylvain stumbles up the stairs, laughing softly every time he stubs his foot or misses a step, and squints at the starry sky above the low buildings around them. “Lost my shirt.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Felix says. He shoves Sylvain upright and whips off his own sweater. It’s a trial, wriggling it onto Sylvain, but they do manage it, even if it’s a little too short to cover Sylvain’s stomach.

“Aw,” Sylvain says. He brushes Felix’s cheek with a thumb. “No one’s ever given me their shirt before. You shouldn’t be so nice, you know.” He leans in, wrapping his arms around Felix’s waist, and Felix’s whole body shivers. “You know what they say about me, yeah?”

“I’m not one of your _girls,_ Sylvain,” Felix says, and pulls out his phone to call a cab. 

“They say I’m bad news,” Sylvain drawls. He tugs Felix close, and Felix’s phone gets mashed in his pecs. “I’m promishtucous. Promiscoul. Slut. I’m a slut. I can’t settle.”

“Okay.” Felix hurriedly navigates the app. 

“I’m a thief.” Sylvain’s smile has an edge to it, in the dark. “I steal hearts, I steal, I steal inheritances. I steal—“

“You didn’t steal shit from your brother,” Felix snaps. Sylvain struggles to focus, swaying around Felix as though Felix is a post in a storm.

“Heard about that?” Sylvain asks. “You do your research. Bet you don’t know I’m a, what’s the word, it’s deg. Degenerate. Degenerate trash, that’s what I am. Under a nice shiny package.”

“Hardly.” Felix pockets his phone and wrenches Sylvain’s hands from around his waist. “Your dad’s just a piece of shit, Sylvain, and your brother’s worse. Did he give you this?” He touches Sylvain’s jaw. “Did he?”

“I got all the good looks from my mother’s side,” Sylvain says.

“Right.” One day, Felix is going to _kill_ Miklan Gautier.

They get kicked out of the cab a few blocks from the house, when Sylvain has to crawl out of the back seat and vomit into the street for a good five minutes. Felix stands there with a hand on his shoulder, sighing heavily, and helps haul Sylvain back to his feet when he’s done.

“You’re the nicest chick I ever met,” Sylvain says. Felix rolls his eyes, but when Sylvain sees the Blue Lions house, he tugs on Felix’s hair. “Hey, not allowed to bring girls in. Gotta call Felix.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Felix says, punching in the passcode. He glowers at Dedue as they hobble in, daring him to say a word, and Sylvain’s head sways slightly, tipping onto Felix’s.

“Need help?” Dedue asks. Ashe steps around the counter before Felix can say anything, and takes Sylvain’s other side.

“You don’t have to,” Felix snaps.

“Yeah, I know.”

Thankfully, Ashe doesn’t follow Felix into Sylvain’s room. He does hover a little, giving Felix what he probably thinks is a conspiratorial look, but Felix just shuts the door and shoves Sylvain towards the bed.

“Get right down to it, huh,” Sylvain says. He pulls Felix towards him. “You look right. Hair’s all a mess.” He brushes Felix’s bangs with the back of his knuckles. “Fuck, I’m too gay for this.”

_What._

“What.”

“Look, I can just.” Sylvain tries to drop to his knees, but he ends up pressing his face to Felix’s thigh, and Felix is trapped there, with Sylvain’s nose inches from his cock, hands clenching in the air at his sides. “I can make you feel good. I’m good at that. Only thing I’m, you know, good at, really.”

“Sylvain.”

“Yeah, like that.” Sylvain nuzzles his hip. “You sound like…”

Felix lets out a groan, half frustration, half a strangled _scream,_ and drags Sylvain’s head back by the hair. Sylvain looks up at him, blinking slowly, lips slightly parted.

“It’s Felix,” he says. “I’m Felix. Stop grabbing my ass.”

“Oh. No you aren’t.” Sylvain tries to stand, falls to the side, and crawls to his bed. He hauls himself up by the arms. “Felix doesn’t even like me.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Felix says.

“Kissed me once,” Sylvain says. Felix’s blood turns to ice. “When we were in high school. Wouldn’t even, wouldn’t look at me afterwards. Which. You know. Makes sense. I’m kind of…” He pushes himself to his feet. “Garbage. Said that. Warned you.”

“Stop.” Felix pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sylvain.”

“Deserves better anyways,” Sylvain says, in a soft voice, and takes Felix’s face in his hands. “You probably deserve better, too.”

Then, just when Felix opens his mouth to protest, Sylvain kisses him.

The kiss is soft. A little messy, with Sylvain sucking on Felix’s lower lip and missing his tongue, and Felix tries not to think about the fact that Sylvain just threw up in the street a few minutes ago, tries not to think about the wetness in Sylvain’s eyes, the desperate way his hands clench in Felix’s hair. Then Sylvain freezes, and he drags Felix’s hair out of the ponytail so it goes falling over his shoulders. He pulls back, eyes bright.

“Oh,” he says.

“Yeah.” Felix kisses him back, hard, trying to fit years of longing and frustration into the press of their mouths, the heat of his body against Sylvain’s. When he wrenches himself away, Sylvain is almost smiling. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“ _Oh,_ ” Sylvain says again, and his smile broadens, his first true smile of the night, before his eyes roll back and he passes out at Felix’s feet.

***  
Sylvain wakes up with a pounding headache, a mouth that tastes like something died in it and an aching jaw. He blinks in confusion at the angle of the light, because this isn’t the room in the rented house. It’s his bedroom back at the Blue Lions dorm. 

How -- when -- 

He thinks about the uncomfortable dinner with his family, the woman there he was supposed to marry. Miklan’s sneering _you worried she won’t let you keep fucking Dimitri? That’s the only reason they let you be their friend, right? You bend over for them like you do everyone else?_ His father pretending not to notice when Miklan nearly broke his jaw, Miklan’s fierce smile of pleasure when Sylvain couldn’t hold back his gasp of pain. 

Calling the car and heading out to the Abyss. It all turns into a blur after that. The drinks, the shots, the cage. The girl who looked like -- 

Wait. 

No. Not the girl who looked like Felix. _Felix_. Felix had brought him home, put him to bed. Sylvain had kissed him. 

He groans and presses his hands to his face. He’s been so good at hiding this, putting miles and miles of meaningless sex between himself and his feelings for Felix. And now he’s fucked it all up, which, maybe he should have seen that coming. He even fucks up fucking up.

There’s a hazy memory, though, of Felix…kissing him back? 

Had Felix really….? 

Sylvain pulls his hands off his face and swings his legs over the bed, standing up and immediately going woozy from doing it way too fast. He stumbles into the hallway and the main bathroom at the end of the floor. Sylvain brushes his teeth for a good five minutes straight, showers, and stands beneath the hot spray of water trying to decide if Felix really had kissed him or if it was just some kind of dream borne of too many vodka shots and too many years of desperate yearning for something he can’t have. 

Sylvain gets out of the shower, brushes his teeth _again_ , and then slings a towel around his waist and goes to find Felix. His heart is racing and he feels like he’s going to throw up the nothing in his stomach, but he has to know. He has to know if Felix really kissed him or if imagined it. 

Except that Felix’s door is open, and Felix is not in his room. 

Of course. He’s gone. Probably left as soon as the sun came up, get as far away from the memory of dragging Sylvain back from the Abyss drunk and rambling. Of Sylvain confessing and kissing him. He’s horrified Felix, and here’s the proof, and things will never be the same, this is it, this is happening. He's been fighting his urges for _years_ , just to avoid this. 

“Sylvain.” 

Turning, he sees Felix standing in the doorway to _his_ bedroom. His heart kicks up even as he feels a rush of relief. Felix looks -- gorgeous, like he always does. Lean and beautiful, his hair pulled back and his face serious but a little wary. 

Sylvain drags in a shaky breath. “Hey. I was. Looking for you.” 

Felix is just staring at him. Sylvain sees his eyes flicker down to the towel, and back up. He frowns. 

Shit. Shit. Sylvain smiles, going for easy-going. “Hey, about last night, I --” 

“Did you mean it.” 

Sylvain rakes a hand through his damp hair. “What? Mean what?” He knows. Of course. And he’s going to chicken out, he’s going to laugh it off, he has to. Miklan’s words echo in his mind, _the only reason they keep you around_. His father’s stare. His inability to be anything to anyone other than a burden. 

He can’t do this to Felix. “I just, you, know, I was really --” 

He doesn’t get the rest of it out. Felix steps in and _shoves_ him, back against the door across from Felix’s room. He traps Sylvain there, one hand on his chest, the other on the wall next to Sylvain’s head. “Don’t. Don’t you dare. I’ve -- it’s been years, _years_. You’re not doing this to me anymore.” He tilts his face up, flushed and breathing hard, his amber eyes almost glowing. “ _Did you mean it_.” 

Felix’s hand burns like a brand on Sylvain’s skin. He’s sure Felix can feel his heart racing. “Yeah.” What’s the point of pretending? 

“You fucking idiot,” Felix says, and the hand at the door slides around to the back of his neck and pulls him into a kiss. 

Felix is -- Felix is kissing him. Pressing his body up against Sylvain, just like Sylvain’s imagined a thousand times. Taking charge, taking what he wants, and _wanting Sylvain_. It makes Sylvain gasp into his mouth. 

“Fucking _years_ ,” Felix mutters, and _bites_ his lip. 

Sylvain moans. He can’t help it. This is what he’s thought about for so long, Felix taking the lead, Felix pinning him, kissing him, wanting him - 

His hands slide down and settle on Felix’s waist, pulling him in -- the towel is tented by his erection and he can’t hide it, and even feeling Felix pressed up against him is enough to pull another moan from him. 

“Why the fuck,” Felix pants, kissing his neck, his shoulder. “Why, _why_.” His hands move up and down Sylvain’s bare chest. 

“Felix,” Sylvain chokes out. “I’m - my towel --” 

“Don’t care,” Felix says, kissing him again. 

The towel slips and falls, leaving Sylvain naked up against the door, in the hallway, with a completely-dressed Felix pressed up against him and kissing him. One of his hands drops down, rubs over Sylvain’s lower stomach. 

“I -- Felix, maybe we should --” 

“Shut up,” Felix growls, tugging him into a kiss. 

Sylvain shuts up, and kisses him back. Felix sucks on his tongue and gets a hand down around his cock; Sylvain’s head thumps back against the door and he gasps, grabbing at Felix’s shoulders -- 

The world tilts as the door opens. 

“Hi,” says Claude von Riegan, standing there with messy dark hair and no shirt and a succession of love-bites on his shoulder and up his neck. “Not that this isn’t hot, but these doors aren’t very thick and we can hear you. If you’re both good with us listening, that’s great and all, but --” 

“Claude!” Dimitri says, from where he’s on the bed, also shirtless in a pair of sleep pants, one knee propped up. 

Felix growls and pulls Sylvain back so he doesn’t fall, hand a vise around Sylvain’s wrist. “Come on.” 

“My, you're not too bad to look at, Gautier,” Claude calls. “Good job, Felix.” 

Sylvain tosses a grin over his shoulder, even as he lets Felix pull him toward his bedroom. “Thanks!” 

He can hear Claude laughing as Felix tugs him into his room and closes the door. 

Felix’s hair is messy, his eyes bright and his mouth wet from kissing, cheeks flushed. A glance down shows Sylvain isn’t the only one who’s turned on, and Sylvain barely knows what to do with that. 

“Are we going to talk about this?” Sylvain asks. He thinks they should probably talk about this. 

“I get off all the time thinking about pinning you down on my bed and making you beg me to ride you,” is Felix’s answer; spoken in that sharp voice, his expression as intense as ever. 

“That’s not what I -- fuck,” Sylvain shivers. He wants that. He wants that so bad, and he has for a long time, but he’s not….he’s not good enough. Not for Felix. Sylvain is a fuck-up who can't do anything right, and who knows that better than his best friend?

“That’s not what you want?” Felix demands. He sounds pissed off _and_ turned on, which honestly, is sort of how he’s always sounded in Sylvain’s fantasies when this happens. “Because I thought I knew what you wanted and I guess I was wrong.”

Sylvain sort of shrugs. “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize, just tell me the truth.” Felix drags a hand through his hair, dislodging his ponytail entirely. “Please, I can’t -- I thought you hated it. Kissing me. And then last night, you - you made it seem like. All those girls, they were supposed to be….” 

“You,” Sylvain says, because there’s no real point in denying it, not anymore. “I -- I’m sorry. You deserve better, and --” 

“Sylvain, shut up,” Felix interrupts. He looks _so hot_ , one hand on his hip, bossy and staring like he wants to eat Sylvain alive. “Shut up and get on the bed. We’ll talk about it later. But I’m getting my hands on you and making you come beneath me because I’m not fucking waiting any longer.” 

Sylvain sort of stares at him, then walks over to the bed. “This is, uh. Unexpected. You being this bossy.” 

“Really,” Felix huffs, pulling off his shirt. “Is it?” 

“It’s hot as fuck, but yeah,” Sylvain says, sitting on Felix’s bed, wide-eyed and almost afraid to say the wrong thing that will make this stop. He definitely _wanted_ it to be like this between them, but never imagined it would really happen. “I don’t...it’s hard to think--” 

Felix pushes him back and climbs on top of him. “Stop thinking.” He leans down and kisses Sylvain, grinding on top of him, grabbing at his wrists when Sylvain tries to touch him and slamming them over his head. Sylvain moans -- it is _really_ doing it for him, this aggressive streak of Felix’s. Felix is panting as he stares down at him. “Goddess, I have -- you have no idea how long --” with a shake of his head he leans in and kisses him, grinding himself against Sylvain’s cock. 

“Still have -- your pants on,” Sylvain manages, against Felix’s mouth. He tastes so good, and his weight is perfect, just what Sylvain wants on top of him; the hard ridge of his cock feels so good that Sylvain almost comes from feeling it against his own, even through the fabric of his sweatpants. “Felix, ah --” 

“Yeah,” Felix groans, against his mouth. His perfect, lean body is trembling on top of Sylvain’s. He must not be wearing underwear beneath his sweats; there’s a wet spot already on the front of the fabric. “Yeah, fuck.” 

Sylvain has never done this with a man, and all of it is too good, overwhelming; he pulls a little against Felix’s grip on his wrists, not hard, but testing the strength of the restraint. “I wanna touch you.” 

“Too bad,” Felix gasps out, face buried against Sylvain’s neck. He’s grinding on Sylvain, writhing, his hair everywhere and his skin burning-hot and slick with sweat. “You can wait.” 

“Yes, okay --” Sylvain arches up, trying to help, Felix is going for it and Sylvain doesn’t want to stop him but he really wants Felix to take off his pants at least. “You should -- your pants, maybe, off, yeah, I think that’d be good, I --” 

Felix bites him on the shoulder and lets go of one of Sylvain’s wrists, reaches down and shoves his sweats down enough to free his cock. He immediately pins Sylvain again, pulling back to stare down at him with burning, consuming eyes. He’s panting so loudly, and then he tosses his hair out of his face, and Sylvain gasps, “I’m gonna come,” and Felix kisses him. 

He’s never felt this before, the slick slide of another man’s cock on his and it’s not just anyone’s cock it’s _Felix’s_ , and Sylvain comes with a low moan into Felix’s mouth as his body jerks beneath Felix’s. Felix just keeps going, eventually putting his face in the space between Sylvain’s neck and shoulder again, panting hot against his skin. 

“Goddess, you’re so -- fuck, yeah, Felix,” Sylvain says, to the ceiling. Felix makes a frustrated sound against his neck; Sylvain is almost desperate to figure out how to help, to make this good so that Felix won’t want to forget it ever happened. “How do I -- help me make it good for you, what do you want, what can I _do_ \--” 

“My -- just say my name, mine, mine --” 

Sylvain turns his head, works on hand free and gets Felix’s absurdly sexy, messy hair in a grip to pull his head back so that Felix can see him. “Felix,” he says, softly. “Felix, Felix, _Felix_ , do it, please, _Felix_ \--” 

That’s enough; Felix sobs out a beautiful sound and rocks down against him as he comes, so fucking wet and messy and perfect all over Sylvain’s softened cock and his stomach. Then he collapses on top of him, gasping for breath, leaving Sylvain feeling like his world’s been both rocked and upended and flipped sideways all at once. He pets Felix’s hair and then strokes his back, feeling Felix’s fingers ease off his other wrist. 

Felix raises his head. He looks wrecked, strands of his inky hair clinging to his flushed face. “Okay. Now. Now we can talk.” 

“Sure,” says Sylvain, and kisses him. He kisses him, and kisses him, and doesn’t stop for a long time. 

***

“Good for them,” Claude says from where he’s sitting upright in Dimitri’s lap, reading an article from the library archives Dimitri printed out the day before. Dimitri can’t believe he has the self control to _read_ while Sylvain is shouting Felix’s name across the hall, but then, he’s never met anyone quite so focused as Claude. He acts like a butterfly, sure, moving from one person to another in his ever-growing web of contacts, but he can also take the time to highlight an article while his boyfriend lies shirtless beneath him, growing hard just from their nearness. Claude lays the papers on Dimitri’s chest so he can make a note, and Dimitri reaches up to toy with his hair, curling it in his fingers.

“Seems like there’s an old tradition in Faerghus,” Claude says, tilting his head into Dimitri’s touch. “Something where people dress up in like, leaves and twigs, and they dance around maypoles.”

“It’s for fertility,” Dimitri says. Claude gives him an almost wounded look, clearly thrown off by this revelation being so commonplace, and Dimitri smiles. “It involves a maypole, Claude. Maypoles are always about sex.”

“Must be those long winters getting to you all, huh,” Claude says. “Anyways, it says here that they’re supposed to represent the Green Lady. They wore masks kind of like our new friends do—you know who the Green Lady’s supposed to be?”

“Another aspect of the goddess,” Dimitri says. “We keep a statue of her in the rose garden in Fhirdiad. She’s, ah. Green.”

Claude raises his eyebrows. “Really.”

“It’s art, Claude. You know I’m no good with that.” Dimitri huffs as Claude shifts forward on his lap. “I’m not certain how—“ Claude lets the papers slide to the bed and grabs a handful of Dimitri’s pecs. “How beneficial it is to, ah, hide our investigation like this. They’re bound to find out, and…” Claude smiles and tweaks his nipples, and Dimitri flops his head back on the pillow. 

“Have I ever mentioned that I like how _much_ of you there is?” Claude asks, bending down to kiss the sensitive skin of Dimitri’s throat. Dimitri smiles.

“Possibly.” He flips Claude onto his back, nearly smacking him into the wall at the same time, and braces over him. Claude teases a nipple with his tongue, then closes his lips around it. “You’re sure this is the right thing to do? Shouldn’t we leave this to the authorities?”

“They think it’s a prank,” Claude says, where he’s pressed his face between Dimitri’s pecs. “I asked Teach about it after class. His dad’s in Security, remember? We’ll be good, Dimitri. They probably think we’re spooked, now.”

“I’m not certain that I’m _not_ spooked,” Dimitri says, and gasps as Claude shifts beneath him, sliding down the bed. His tongue trails down Dimitri's abs, and he bites on the hem of his sweatpants before slowly pulling them down. Dimitri gasps and tries not to buck forward as hot breath ghosts over his cock.

“I did say,” Claude says, and Dimitri bites his fist as Claude gives the tip of his cock the tiniest, teasing lick. “That I like how _much_ of you there is—“

“Spirits, Claude, you’re going to kill me,” Dimitri groans.

“Won’t that be a headline,” Claude says, and takes Dimitri in his mouth.

Dimitri tries, he truly does, but soon enough his arms start to tremble and his thighs tense with the effort of not moving, and when Claude grabs his ass, drags him down, and half moans, half _chokes_ around Dimitri’s cock, Dimitri can’t control himself any longer. He rides Claude’s face, dragging himself up every few thrusts so Claude can gasp for breath and pull him back down again, until he’s practically sobbing his release into the pillows. He kisses Claude, after, snaking one hand between them to jerk him off under his sweatpants, and he swallows Claude’s moan as he comes beneath him, half-smiling and far too smug.

They lie there a moment, panting slightly, before Claude’s phone vibrates off the bed. Claude groans and rolls over Dimitri to get it, and he ends up on his back on the floor, squinting up at the screen.

“Ignatz is almost done with the fake mask,” he says. Dimitri shivers, but Claude is too focused on his phone to notice. “He says the photo wasn’t too blurry. Shame we can’t mass-produce them. Get everyone on campus wearing one, like a statement. That’d really freak them out.”

“Yes, and that’s exactly how we want them,” Dimitri drawls. “Panicked.”

Claude’s eyebrows rise. “Well, yeah. Panicked people make mistakes. But if we can just, I don’t know, show a _friendly green face_ around campus, maybe one of them will think we’re part of the creepy muggers association.”

“I still think this is a terrible idea,” Dimitri says. “I don’t like the idea of you going… undercover like this.”

Claude says something in Almyran, slow and affected, and Dimitri, who has secretly been struggling through a blasted app with an inane _owl_ to pick up more than a handful of words, listens intently.

“You’re used to… living in a pot?” he asks.

Claude grins. “Not exactly, handsome.” He repeats the words, slower this time. “I’m used to being undercover,” he says. “I used slang for undercover, sort of. We shorten a lot of our words in my part of the country.”

“So you’re from the Almyran version of the sticks, is what you’re saying.”

Claude’s eyes crinkle. “Pretty much. Just wyverns and drunk college students and an eyesore of a palace, that’s us.”

“Your palace is beautiful,” Dimitri protests, because it _is,_ and Claude covers his face with both hands for a second before he clambers back onto the bed, kissing his way up the column of Dimitri’s throat.

He doesn’t change his mind about the mask, though, and Dimitri is just getting out of rugby practice the next day when Claude comes running over, bundled up in too many layers and still shivering, to tell him the mask is done.

“I think we should try out the Abyss first,” he says, handing Dimitri a bottle of water. Dimitri pours half of it over his head—practice was _hell_ today—and Claude’s gaze follows the beads of water running down his neck. “We, uh. Might find someone in a crowd.”

“And if they know you’re not one of them?” Dimitri asks. He unbuttons his shirt to get more circulation, and Claude adjusts his scarf. “What if they retaliate?”

Claude smiles, foxlike and wicked. “They can try.” He lifts himself up on his toes, and Dimitri leans down to kiss him. “Meet me outside the dorm tonight. Wear something flashy.”

Dimitri considers his closet, which Claude has already raided for sweaters more than once, and sighs. “I’ll certainly make my best attempt.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some tense moments starting about halfway through! This is where the (referenced) grief, peril, and violence comes in.

“Khalid! Why is this so -- why can’t I see anything?” Malik, Conquerer of the Starry Skies and current king of Almyra, has a scowl on his handsome, bearded face as he taps on the laptop. “Khalid!” 

“Sweetie,” says a voice, before the image of Tiana, Queen of Almyra, fills the screen. “You have to press -- I think it’s this button, here --” 

Claude watches his parents struggle with the laptop and tries not to laugh. He presses his hands to his face. “Conquerer of the Starry Sky, Defeated By Skype.” 

His father’s face breaks into a severe scowl. “I _heard_ that, Khalid!” Then he blinks. “Oh, I heard that. Then why do I not see you?” 

Claude’s mom is too busy giggling. “Defeated by Skype. That was funny, Khalid! Ah, Malik, here -- press this, see, the button with the camera?” 

“Hi,” Claude says, waving. “Can you see me?” 

“Ah! There you are. Mocking your father. They are teaching you bad manners in Fodlan, son.” Malik’s thundercloud face eases into a smile. “You look well.” 

“Yes,” Tiana says, waving at him. Claude waves back. “Very well! Which is good, because your father was going to send Nader to guard your dorm if you did not appear hale and hearty.” 

“Great idea, Dad,” says Claude, groaning. “No one will figure out I’m the Crown Prince if my very recognizable uncle is shadowing me all the time.” 

“Hmph,” says Malik. “Hiding your name, your station -- your brothers would not do such a thing.” 

Behind him, Claude’s mom rolls her eyes. 

“I know,” Claude says, sighing at the old argument. “But, hey, everything’s fine.” 

“Is it?” Malik, who has never learned how to modulate his voice, leans forward as if he needs to be louder. “Because, son, I think you forgot the deal we made when I agreed to go along with this plan of yours.” 

Claude sighs. “Dad, I --” 

“No! Listen. You are a good son, smart, clever, a bit mouthy, but I suppose that’s your mother’s fault--” 

“What a cold bed you’ll have for the rest of your life, darling,” his mom says, and Claude wonders idly if everyone else is this horrified at their parents. 

“But you are the Crown Prince of Almyra. I will not have you hurt because you have chosen to move to a frozen wasteland of a country that didn’t even understand proper _math_ until the rest of us --” 

“Malik,” his mom says, on a choked laugh. “Remember the point of this call.” 

Claude pinches the bridge of his nose. “Dad. I’m sorry you’re so mad about algebra, but can we. Not?” He loves his parents. A lot. They’re actually very good parents, for all his half-brothers are probably secretly cheering Claude’s demise by snowfall or some contraption that would have worked if only the person who made it knew about algebra sooner or whatever. Maybe not death, they’re not _evil_. Maybe just for Claude to vanish into nothing because the food is so bad. They were always saying he was too scrawny. 

“I am sending someone there,” his father says. 

This is exactly the thing Claude did not want to happen. “Dad --” 

“You are my son,” Malik says, softly, and if anything will get Claude’s attention, it’s his father _not_ yelling. “And I love you. Do you think I want you to be harmed getting a sub-par education so lacking in the fundamentals of science and mathematics?” 

“Why did I marry you,” Tiana says 

“Okay, okay!” Claude holds up his hands. They have to do this fast; Lorenz will be back soon, and while this conversation is happening in Almyran, Claude’s father is imminently recognizable. Lorenz of all people will demand to know why Claude is Skyping with the King of Almyra. “Mom, I can’t answer that and frankly, I don’t want to. Dad, I’m not even taking a math class --” 

“Thank the spirits, we’d have to undo all the --” 

“And,” Claude interrupts, loudly, “I’m fine. You don’t need to send anyone. It was just, you know. College stuff. People, uh,” he thinks quick. “Just are...like that. Sometimes. Not usually. Um.” 

“Maybe you need more classes in speaking,” his father huffs. But his expression, always intense, softens just a bit. “Khalid. You have said that you have someone to make you feel safe, but I do not trust Fodlanders and their weapons. How could I, when it took them _how_ long to figure out gunpowder? But I will not send your uncle, though he wanted to come. I will send his daughter, Aliah.” 

Oh, no. “Dad, she’s _worse_.” 

“But now,” his father continues, and Claude knows this is a battle he’s already lost, “You will tell me who this blond man is you are seen with often. Kissing. On benches.” 

“Khalid, do you have a boyfriend? And you didn’t tell me, your mother?” 

“Mom, people don’t -- this isn’t --” He puts his face in his hands and tries not to scream. This is why he didn’t want anyone knowing he was the crown prince! “Did you tell _your_ dad about your boyfriend?” 

“Well, yes,” Tiana says, breezily, waving a hand. “On my way out to meet your father to elope. My father is an old windbag, Khalid. He doesn’t appreciate cultural diversity.” 

Claude looks at his father, who is smiling at his mom in a way that makes Claude want to slam his laptop down, his parents are way too into each other for him to handle. 

“Your father --” Malik starts. 

“Can I be excused?” Claude asks, only half-joking. 

“Boyfriend,” Tiana says. “Tell us of this boyfriend!” 

Claude switches to Fodlan. “Promise Dad won’t have him assassinated? Mom. It could start a war.” 

“Do not switch languages, I know the word for _war_ in that language, Khalid!” 

He wonders if he can abdicate and go be Dimitri’s kept-boyfriend forever. “How did you know I … you know, never mind. Fine. Fine! I have a boyfriend, his name’s Dimitri, he’s very nice and --” 

“Dimitri?” booms his father. “Dimitri Blaiddyd?” 

Of course, right, his father would be able to say that ridiculous tangle of Dimitri’s surname. “Yeah, that’s him.” 

“The Crown Prince of Faerghus?” Malik smiles. “Is that so. Is that _so_.” 

“Darling,” says Tiana. A warning. “Darling.” 

“So you’ve seduced the crown prince of Faerghus,” Malik says, smiling Claude’s own smile at him. 

If there’s ever something you don’t want to hear your dad say, _you seduced_ has got to be up there. “Um. We’re dating. He’s nice. He knows who I am,” he adds, quickly. 

“I should hope so, or else Fodlan is indeed in trouble.” 

Claude does not point out he had to tell Dimitri -- he thinks Dimitri would have figured it out, eventually. “Anyway, see, he has security and that means --” 

“No. Aliah is coming and that is final, or you will come home and do your schooling here,” Malik says, leaning forward. A cat, one of his mom’s favorites, jumps up on the computer and sticks her nose in the camera. Claude gets a brief look at a bemused face and crossed blue eyes before the cat is removed by his mom. 

“Just, tell her to not be so...uh.” There is no way to tell his cousin to do anything, especially _not_ to. “I mean, this is good for us, right? Me being with Dimitri. You wouldn’t want to mess that up with Aliah going, um, all...like Uncle Nader, right?” He gives his parents a winning smile. 

His father snorts. “Dragonlet, that is a nice try. This Dimitri, though. He will meet me as your paramour -” 

“Boyfriend, Malik. The kids use the word _boyfriend_ ,” his mother says, from around an armful of cat. 

It does make Claude smile to hear the old childhood nickname from his father. That, along with the familiar cat and his mom, is actually making Claude kind of homesick. Malik is a man with a lot of opinions and he’s definitely as Almyran as they come, and the gods know he and Claude have disagreed and butted heads about everything from social issues to politics to music. But his father is a good man, a good king, and as much as they sometimes make him want to throw himself off a palace balcony, Claude loves them. 

But he’s low-key terrified of introducing Dimitri to them. Though honestly, Earnest Dimitri Blaiddyd with his rugby player’s body and sweet smile and genuine belief that the last known water dragon in existence really _did_ live under a freshwater spring north of the capital. He would be wonderful and charming without trying. His mom would be smitten. Malik would be -- 

_Mind on the game here,_ Claude tells himself sternly. “I’ll introduce you. He’s trying to learn Almyran. He’s pretty great, really.” 

Both his parents exchange a smile. “Must run in the blood, fondness for these pale Fodlanders and their cold hearts. Need that good Almyran di--” 

His mother clamps a hand over his father’s mouth. “ _Malik_! That is our _son_. Your heir!” She pulls her hand away. 

“Hmph.” Malik nods at Claude. “Fine, be this prince’s boyfriend but I will make sure he is...looked into, and I am sure his family will do the same -- his uncle is regent, yes?” 

“Yeah,” Claude says, and wonders if his father knows anything about what happened to former king, Dimitri’s father. 

“Then I am sure he understands. I will call this regent, does he have the Skype --” 

“No!” Claude says quickly. “No, no. Please, don’t, uh. Don’t worry about that, Dad, it’s...you don’t need to do that.” _If there are any gods at all, have mercy on me and don’t let my dad try and talk to Dimitri’s uncle on a computer program, please, no._

“We’ll see,” says Malik, and then Claude’s phone flashes the _Lorenz will be back soon, you need to stop Skyping the king_ notif at him. “Just don’t go visiting any museums with him without guards, Khalid.” 

“I -- wait, what?” Claude frowns. Is he forgetting his own native language? “Did you say museums? Why wouldn’t I do that?” Claude loves museums. There’s a public one in the royal palace -- all museums in Almyra are actually public and free -- and his father has been a huge proponent of them for Claude’s entire life. 

“If you are going to date the future king of Faerghus, Dragonlet, learn what happened to the last one, yes?” 

Claude knows that Dimitri’s father was killed at a public speaking engagement, along with his bodyguard, the heir to a dukedom. It was all over the news when he was a teenager, but he doesn’t remember hearing that it happened at a museum. Still, asking his father will invite more questions, and he really does have to go. So he bids goodbye to his parents, which takes another ten minutes because Almyran parents are the literal worst even if they’re not the royal couple and Claude has to assure his father that yes, really, he’s getting a good education and his mother that he does, in fact, know how to do his laundry. 

Then he gets teased about his boyfriend and his father reminds him _remember Aliah isn’t the only one who is watching you_ , and after they bid him farewell he slams down his laptop right as the door opens and Lorenz walks in. 

“Surprised you’re here,” Lorenz says, a little miffed. “And not at _Dimitri’s_.” 

“Hey, Lorenz, do you remember hearing about the King of Faerghus being assassinated?” Claude asks.

Lorenz blinks at him. “What was that?” 

“I said, do you remember --” Claude stops, wincing. He’d been speaking in Almyran. Being bilingual was great except for when his brain went too fast for him to switch back. Why couldn’t everyone just be bilingual? Honestly. “Sorry, I was talking to my parents and forgot to flip the language switch.” 

“Oh. Yes, I do imagine that would be difficult.” Lorenz still sounds a bit annoyed; he’s convinced the only reason Claude bumped him off the top spot in their poli sci program was because Claude could speak Almyran. 

Which, Lorenz could have learned instead of taking _Medieval Court Fodlan_ , the most useless class in existence, but whatever, not Claude’s fault. Though maybe he doesn’t want to ask Lorenz about Dimitri’s father -- he should maybe just ask Dimitri. 

“What were you asking me?” 

“Oh, if you’ve seen Ignatz,” he prevaricates, quickly, which is a gift he definitely learned from his mother. 

“No,” Lorenz says, like Claude is an idiot. “But, hmm. Maybe he’s, gasp, shock, in his _room_?” 

“You’re not supposed to just _say_ gasp, shock,” says Claude, but he grabs his phone and heads to the door. “Oh, hey, is everything okay with Holst?” Lorenz is prickly and can be bitchier than even the littlest edgelord, but Claude _does_ actually like him. 

“What,” Lorenz sniffs. “Go away, Claude, I’m trying to study.” 

Lorenz is staring at his closet. Claude gives up and heads down the hall, where he’s so caught up in his own thoughts that he knocks once on Ignatz’s door, then yanks the door wide open after he hears a muffled noise and something that is probably a _come in_. 

Except, it isn’t. 

***

“I said I was sorry,” Claude says, for the fifth time. “I thought you said _come in_.” 

Ignatz is studiously not looking at him, instead fidgeting with the green mask on his desk. “It’s -- it’s fine.” His face is the color of the sunset in the Almyran desert. 

“Really,” Raphael adds. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious what he said was _no, wait, I’m busy_ , but it’s okay, I can see how that sounds like _come in_ , sure.” 

The thing about Raphael is that Claude can’t tell if he’s trolling him or being serious. It’s very disconcerting. “Um. I just, didn’t...know. About you two! But it’s, it’s great, really.” Also, wow, Ignatz owning a leather harness makes….no, wait, that definitely doesn’t make any sense. 

“Huh?” Raphael blinks at him. “Us, two, what? We’re roommates.” 

“Oh, my Gods, they’re roommates,” Claude mutters, because damn Hilda and her penchant for getting drunk and sending him vine compilations at 3 am. “I mean. You were. You know.” He waves at them. “The, ah. Kissing?” 

Ignatz makes a strangled noise. 

“Well, dude, sometimes bros like, gotta kiss each other. For reasons. It’s not big, look how cute Ignatz is.” 

Claude decides there is _way_ too much going on for him to even start to untangle this. If Ignatz and Raph are bang bros, that’s great. No problem. But maybe they could lock the door? Either way. “So, the, ah. Mask?” 

“Here,” Ignatz says, all in a rush, handing it over. “I think I got it pretty close.” 

Claude takes a look at it and whistles. “You -- yeah, you sure did. Wow.” It looks amazingly similar to the one from the photograph; a mass of bark and leaves that, if you look at it from the right angle, you can see the faintest hints of a face even though it covers the wearer’s face entirely. “Ignatz, you really knocked this out of the park.” 

Ignatz, who is still blushing -- from being interrupted making out with his roommate, Raphael insisting they were just bros who do that sometimes, or Claude’s compliments on his mask construction skills, Claude isn’t sure -- at least smiles a little. “Great. But, you’re not...mugging someone, right?” 

“What? No.” Why has this entire day felt like a weird, bizarre descent into some alternate reality? He’ll have to ask Lysithea. Littlest Edgelord she may be, but she studies experimental physics and maybe she can explain it. “I’m investigating!” 

“Well, be careful,” Ignatz says, pushing his glasses up his nose. He glances at Raph. “Maybe he should go, too?” 

“No, no. I’ll have Dimitri there. Big, strong, boyfriend. You know.” Claude clears his throat. “Or, you...know about big, strong roommates. Anyway, thanks, Ignatz.” 

“Sure,” Ignatz says. 

“I’ll walk you out,” says Raphael, as if he needs to when it’s a dorm room. 

Claude almost suggests locking the door, gives up and goes back to his room to find something to wear. Raphael and Ignatz are a mystery to be solved another time -- for now, he’s got a secret society to infiltrate, and if part of his plan involves looking hot enough to drive his gorgeous boyfriend mad with lust so they can grind a bit on the dance floor... hey, why not? Multitasking is a skill, isn’t it? 

***

Claude is wearing a skirt again.

It’s as though Claude has been summoned from a pentagram made up of every one of Dimitri’s heretofore unnamed lusts, hip cocked and boots tapping on the pavement. He’s wearing a black wrap-shirt that exposes his chest and pretty much hangs off his shoulders, his eyeliner is perfect, and the skirt is plaid, the sort of thing that should look ridiculous but when applied to Claude makes Dimitri want to scrap everything and drag him up to his room by the belt.

“You look good,” Dimitri says, after a minute. Claude just smiles.

“Your, uh. Your legs,” Dimitri manages to say five minutes later, as Claude watches him sidelong from under lowered lashes. “I mean. I’ve seen them before, but they’re very. There’s.” He covers his face with one hand.

“Go on, Dimitri,” Claude says, sliding an arm around Dimitri’s waist. “You can say it.”

“I was going to say there’s a lot of them,” Dimitri says, “but that’s ridiculous, because, well, I saw plenty earlier today, and—“

“You’re adorable,” Claude says. He takes Dimitri’s earlobe in this teeth, and before Dimitri’s brain can catch up with the rest of him, he’s pressed Claude to a tree and is lifting him up by the thighs, groping blindly under his skirt. Claude moans, _moans,_ and Dimitri feels something wild stir inside him, a primal rush of heat that has him dragging his teeth down Claude’s neck and grinding against him. Claude’s skirt is flipped up over his thighs, but Dimitri’s presses so close that it doesn’t matter, really. He slides a hand up Claude’s side and jerks as his fingers bump into something lumpy and cold.

“Mask,” Claude says. “This shirt’s technically my robe, I just had Hilda turn it into fashion.”

“Toss the mask.” Dimitri’s voice is a low rumble, and Claude’s green eyes go dark. “Let me take you home.”

“Mm, while I like it when you go all,” Claude twists Dimitri’s hair in a finger. “Kinglike, we need to figure this out. Just in case. We’ll have time to continue this on the dance floor, promise.”

“Don’t think they’ll let us continue _this,_ ” Dimitri murmurs, and Claude smiles and tugs at his hair. Reluctantly, because public decency laws _do_ exist for a reason, he lets Claude down. Claude looks deliciously rumpled, lips wet, pupils blown, and his hair sticks up at the back where it’s rubbed up against the tree. Dimitri smoothes it out for him, and Claude gives Dimitri’s hair a look, grins, and tousles it.

“Come on, handsome,” Claude says, as though he isn’t the most attractive creature in the known universe. “Let’s find a mugger.”

***

When Dimitri and Claude step through the doors of the Abyss, half wrapped up in each other already and looking like the front page of a trashy tabloid, a figure in the back of the club rises to their feet.

“No,” someone says, behind them. “You aren’t a part of this, tonight. Don’t interfere.”

The figure watches Dimitri sling an arm around Claude’s waist, smiling broadly down at him. The signet ring on his left hand flashes in the strobing lights of the club.

“Don’t worry,” they say. “Wasn’t planning to.”

***

Claude is beautiful.

Dimitri’s head swims with the overpowering beat of the music and press of bodies, and his feet plod uselessly on the tile despite hours of so-called practice back at the dorm, but Claude moves against him with such ease, grinding against him, sliding his arms around his neck, tugging down the collar of Dimitri’s shirt to press his lips to the pale skin he finds there. Dimitri is lost in him, radiant and floating in a sea of sound and touch. He’s not sure, right now, if he can remember being quite so happy in his life.

Claude kisses his neck, pressed flush to Dimitri’s chest with the music throbbing around them, and Dimitri lifts him off his boots to kiss him back.

***

In another basement, far from the lights of the Abyss, a woman pulls on white gloves and lays an axehead made of bone on the floor beside a stone box. The box is narrow, two and a half feet wide at most, but it’s long enough that the woman has to walk a few steps to place another weapon, one that looks distressingly like it’s been carved from a ribcage, on the other side. More still surround the box, but there’s one missing, one empty space she has yet to fill.

But perhaps she doesn’t need it. She trails her gloved fingers over the lid of the stone box, breathes in the cold, damp air of the stone basement, and for a moment, she can almost feel warmth under her fingers. Not yet, but soon, like a phantom pain before the cut. 

Yes.

Perhaps this will be enough.

***

Claude drags himself away from Dimitri, who sits wistfully at the bar like a puppy left out in the rain, and ducks into the staff bathroom. The robe is wrinkled after being wrapped around his arms and waist for so long, and the mask is clammy and warm, but he fits it on and stares at himself in the mirror. A fey, wild thing made of leaves and bark stares back, and he smiles beneath the mask. 

The Abyss is full of dark corners and back rooms, which are usually occupied by those whose dorms are actually monitored for college liaisons, and Claude slides around them like a ghost, careful to let his mask catch the light once or twice as he makes his way towards the service exit. The robe is too warm, and it’s hard to breathe through the mask, let alone see properly, and Claude nearly jumps out of his skin when someone tugs at his sleeve.

“Hey.” He turns. A young man with pale blond hair stands behind him, nervously toying with a crystal on a leather thong around his neck. It looks like one of the crystals Lysithea has hanging around for aesthetic purposes—her spells are usually made of more practical ingredients—and the faint green at its heart reminds Claude of the bottom of a clear spring, grass drifting in the current. 

“Oh,” Claude says. “Hey.”

“We’re not wearing masks yet,” the guy says, and Claude’s heart jumps in his throat. _Yes._ “Not yet.”

“Right,” Claude says, trying to pitch his voice a little higher than usual. “Sorry. Forgot. When are we supposed to…?”

“Didn’t you get the text?” The guy walks Claude further into the service corridor, out of view of the main dance floor. “Not until we have him.”

“My phone’s dead,” Claude whispers. “I’ve been going off like, the worst case of telephone you’ve ever heard of. Who’s the target, again?”

“Who do you think?” The guy narrows his eyes. “How do you not know? You know who’s been throwing a temper tantrum about it all day. What’s your name? Take off your mask.”

Shit. Claude sighs. It just can’t be helped, then. He reaches for his mask, takes a half a step back, and decks the guy in the face. He goes reeling back, and Claude punches him again, a solid left hook that sends him staggering to the floor.

“Dude!” The guy covers his bleeding nose with both hands. “What the fuck?”

Claude rips off his mask, and the man pales. Good. Claude drops to a knee and grips him tight by the collar. He’s too dazed to properly fight back, and Claude digs his hand in his pockets to pull out a wallet.

“Hey,” the guy says. “That’s—“

“Illegal? From one of you?” Claude asks, in a dangerously low voice. “You know I can bury you, right?”

“What, cause you’re the prince’s fuckbuddy?” 

Oh. Yeah. For a second, Claude forgot the whole pretense in the first place. “Right, yeah. And you’re… Gregor? Really? Yeah, you’re Gregor Denthis, apparently, which shit, sucks for you, and let me promise you now that you’re in deep shit if you don’t start talking. So what’s your plan? What are you doing tonight?”

“Like I’ll tell y—“ Gregor whines as Claude cocks his fist. “Look, we’ll bring him back.”

Claude’s skin prickles under the robe. “What?”

“Your prince,” Gregor says. “We’ll bring him back. We just, we need him.”

Claude’s breath hitches in his throat. “Where. For what.”

“For the ritual,” Gregor says. “We’ll bring him back, I swear, it’s just a, a thing, it’s—“

“ _When were you doing this,_ ” Claude says, and there’s something in his voice that scares even him, deep down, below the boiling rage. Gregor quavers. 

“Tonight,” he says, in a small voice. “We should already have him.”

***

Dimitri shouldn’t be drunk. 

He ordered a water. He knows it was a water, because he saw the bartender pour it, but the bar is so crowded now, and he can’t quite recall… Claude. Claude is out there. He’ll take Dimitri home. Figure out what this is. Maybe it’s the heat in here. Maybe it’s the dancing, the music, the voices in his ears. 

He shouldn’t be drunk.

He hasn’t been drunk since he was fourteen. He tried it, because it was the only thing he knew to try with the news dogging his every step and his father’s unseeing eyes staring out at him from every TV and newspaper, but then Sylvain was there and Dimitri was _howling_ and no one mentioned the broken glass or the way he wouldn’t let go, the fact that Ingrid had to pry his fingers loose from Sylvain’s arms. Or Felix, poor Felix, with his brother dead, just a footnote in the tragedy of Dimitri’s life, staring at him from the curtains. 

So he doesn’t drink. He doesn’t.

It brings out something he doesn’t like. Stirs the grief, twists it up in a sick pit of rage, the anger Edelgard won’t stop stoking in herself, the anger Dimitri spent all his life avoiding. The fury in Edelgard’s eyes every time a reporter shoved a camera in her face or showed her a clip of her and King Lambert laughing together, the way they always had. That rage that fuels her, that tempers the steel of her purpose, all it does with Dimitri is burn him down.

So he doesn’t.

But he is, because the lights are starting to blur, and he can’t stand up straight when he slides off his barstool to find Claude, and he barely registers the touch of hands on his arms.

“—get him home,” someone says. He doesn’t know them. Home. He would like to be home. He would like to introduce Claude to his mother. To his father. His father would like him, he thinks. Possibly.

“Need Claude,” he says, but the voices silence him, usher him up the stairs, out of the warmth of the club and into a sky full of whirling stars.

***

The woman in the basement presses her lips to the stone box. The bone weapons fan out around them, the body of a massive creature, almost complete. The only thing it is missing is a spine.

A replacement would have to do. One with old blood, blood tracing back to the heart of it all.

Soon enough, she’ll have it.

***

The figure in the corner of the Abyss slams their drink down on the counter.

“Fuck this,” they say, as they disappear into the dark. “They’re not touching him.”

***

Claude leaves the robe over the unconscious body of Gregor Denthis and skids out onto the dance floor. Dimitri isn’t there. He isn’t at the bar, either, and Claude races for the counter, shirtless and breathless and so full of rage that it seems to be pouring out of his skin in waves.

“Where did Dimitri go?” he says, and the bartender frowns slightly.

“Thought his friends took him home,” she says. “The prince, right?”

“What friends.” The bartender blinks, and Claude slams both hands on the edge of the counter. Glasses rattle all along the bar, and someone drops their drink with a shout. “ _What friends? What did they look like?_ ”

“Woah, easy. I don’t know, okay? He just looked a little… wait.” Her frown deepens. “He shouldn’t have been trashed, though, he ordered a water. Fuck. Fuck, shit, okay, we have a protocol for this. Take it easy, we’ll handle it. Balthus! Code blue!”

Claude doesn’t have time for this. The bouncer comes running over, muscles swelling over the chains wrapped around his torso, and the bartender _climbs_ over the counter. 

“Four guys, Garreg Mach U swim team jerseys,” she says. “Carrying a prince. Probably drugged, which way did they go?”

“Towards campus,” Balthus says. “Call the police, I’m on it.”

Claude doesn’t wait around for the rest. They’re heading for campus. Right. He needs to move. He starts up the stairs, fumbling with his phone, and flings himself out the door and onto the pavement. He blinks in the cold air for a second, panting hard.

“Hey, Prince Charming,” someone shouts. There’s an almighty boom and crack, and Claude stares up at Edelgard standing on a motorcycle, her black dress hitched up to her thighs, heels sparkling in the starlight. “Get the fuck on. I saw them get in a car half a minute ago.”

Claude curses. He climbs onto the seat behind Edelgard, who looks like a stormcloud with her hair blowing in the breeze and her lined brows knitted tight, and wraps his arms around her waist.

“The people who took him,” he shouts, over the roar of the engine revving. “They said something about a ritual!”

“I know!” Edelgard shouts back, and before Claude can understand the meaning of what she just said, she takes off, gunning the bike towards the dark, quiet campus where Dimitri has been taken.

***

It’s cold. It’s too cold, here, in the dark, and Dimitri can feel hands on his arms, on his shoulders, dragging him down a set of low stone stairs. He can barely see. Something is there. A woman with pale green hair, standing in a circle of bones.

This isn’t home.

He always hated bones. Not always. Not exactly. But after the murder, yes, because it was what his father was there to see in the first place. Just a bunch of stuffy old bones made into a weapon one of the first kings wielded, put on display for the first time in the royal museum. They were supposed to talk to someone about it, the curator, and Glenn Fraldarius had turned to Dimitri to crack a joke about ancient history or something, and he’d—

His eyes had gone. Gone still. And cold. Like a switch had turned in his brain, and he’d pushed Dimitri down with one hand and grasped for Lambert with the other—

And Dimitri had seen the bullets tear through them, one after another, his father’s broad frame blocking out the sun.

The way Glenn convulsed on his knees, still trying to drag himself over the king, a shield to the last.

All because of some bones in a museum Dimitri has never set foot in since.

He’s crying, he thinks, as he’s pushed to his knees in front of the woman with pale green hair, and through the fog in his brain and the cold on his skin he realizes that he’s there, in the center of the circle, kneeling like a sacrificial lamb at the altar.

***

Claude’s heart won’t stop pounding. His fingers clench and flex around Edelgard’s waist, and when Edelgard veers her bike right into the carefully landscaped lawn of the quad, he doesn’t spare a thought for the poor kid who goes racing for cover or the dirt clods spraying in their wake. Edelgard parks the bike in the middle of the sidewalk, and Claude practically falls off the seat.

“Why did we—where is—“ 

“I overheard them talk about the Science building on their way out,” she says, adjusting her skirt. “Sounds like some fake pagan bullshit to me.”

At any other time, Claude would be thrilled to hear this—He just needs to get Edelgard and Lysithea in the same place for five minutes, that’s all—but all he can think of is Dimitri, possibly drugged, surrounded by the kind of people who don’t have a problem with killing a duke in the dead of night. He charges right for the science building door, but the lock is jammed, and he curses and wrenches at it uselessly. All these plans, all this time, and he’s undone by a _fucking_ lock.

“Fuck’s sake,” Edelgard says, and drags Claude back by the hem of his skirt. “It’s like you’ve never broken into a building before.”

Then, while Claude’s heartbeat thunders in his ears and his breath hitches, Edelgard grabs the frame of the window next to the door and yanks it free.

“Old windows,” she says with a faint smile, and lifts the glass. “Works every time.”

***

The woman raises a knife before the altar, and one of the figures surrounding the pentacle of bones shifts out of the corner of Dimitri’s eye.

“Wait,” someone says. “I thought we just needed the ring.”

Dimitri can still barely see in the darkness, but his mind is slowly starting to clear, and he can feel the stone at his knees, hear the harsh, panting breaths of the woman before him. She barks an order, and when hands grip Dimitri’s shoulders, bending him back over the altar, he can just see the sliver of a face in the reflection on the blade before he finally, finally finds his strength again.

He surges up with a roar. Hands scrabble at his shirt, feet scuff on stone, but Dimitri drags them up with him, teeth bared. Pain flares along his right eye, bright and hot and wet, and someone screams.

They screamed for his father, once. For Glenn.

Dimitri grabs at the knife, and someone screams again as the blade glances over his brow, as more wetness starts to trail down his cheek, as he roars again in pain and rage. The fingers around the blade let go, and Dimitri stumbles forward, shouting in wordless fury, staggering after the fleeing shapes before him. They run, all of them, up winding steps and past a heavy door that slams behind him, through halls that grow slick under his fumbling feet. There’s blood on his shirt, staining his front, running down his neck, and Dimitri staggers to his knees as two of the figures, the faceless _cowards,_ appear at the end of the hall.

“Dima!” 

He knows that voice. He sobs in relief, but it comes out low and guttural, the dying gasp of a beast gutted in the snow, and drops the knife at his side. Hands touch his shoulders, the side of his face, his hair.

“Dima, baby,” El says, the way she did when they were young, when she played pretend at being the wise older sister, never minding who was technically born first. “Dima, we’ve got you. Stay put.”

“I’m calling the police,” says another voice. Claude.

“Claude,” Dimitri says, and it comes out ragged, broken.

“I’m here,” Claude says. He lays a hand on Dimitri’s knee. “I’m here, Dimitri. I’m so sorry.”

“They never should have hurt you,” El says. She presses the uninjured side of Dimitri’s head to her chest and holds him there, fingers tight in his hair. “And they won’t do it again. You hear me? Dimitri? I’ll handle this. They’ll pay for what they’ve done. They’ll _pay._ ”

“Yes,” Dimitri says, as the pain enfolds him, blurring the world yet again into an uneasy darkness. “Yes, they will.”


	8. Chapter 8

Claude slumps in the chair next to Dimitri’s hospital bed, fingers curled loosely around a cup of coffee that was terrible _before_ it went cold. His eyes feel gritty, red from exhaustion and the tears he can’t quite keep in check every time he looks at Dimitri’s sleeping form in the bed. 

The bandage over his missing eye. 

“Mr. von Riegan?” 

Claude’s so out of it that he doesn’t answer at first, staring dully at Dimitri like he might vanish again if Claude so much as blinks, shivering a bit since he’s still wearing his club clothes. 

A polite clear of the throat. “Mr. von Riegan?” 

Right. That’s him. Claude glances up. There’s a uniformed police officer in the doorway. “Uh. Sorry, I -- yeah?” 

“Would you -- mind stepping out in the hallway for a moment?” 

Claude’s eyes flicker to Dimitri. He doesn’t want to leave, but he also doesn’t want whoever did this to Dimitri to get away with it. “Sure.” He gets up and throws the coffee away, then pauses with a careful hand on Dimitri’s shoulder before he turns to follow the officer. 

“I’ve already taken Ms. von Hresvelg’s statement, but I just wanted to go over something with you,” the officer says. “You are registered at the school under the name Claude von Riegan, is that correct?” 

Oh, right. This. Claude sighs. He’s lucky his _father_ isn’t standing there right now, and once he hears about this, Nader probably will show up. In fact, he’s probably on his way. Claude rakes a hand through his hair. “No. I mean, yeah, I am, but that’s not my….” he pauses. Doesn’t really want to say _not my real name_ to a cop. “I’m Almyran. I have a different name at home. It’s Khalid.” 

The cop takes a note, then stops. “Khalid von Riegan?” 

Claude sighs. “Khalid, son of Malik. We don’t use surnames.” The cop is giving him a weird look, and Claude’s tired enough that he says, “My father is the king. I’m the crown prince. Prince Khalid of Almyra. My mother’s maiden name was von Riegan. I go by Claude, here.” 

“Oh.” The cop blinks. “So, you’re a prince? From Almyra?” 

Claude is going to pull his hair out. “Yes. Is that relevant?” 

“Well. A prince was just attacked. So, maybe? But it also, ah. There was someone looking for you. A Mr...Nader?” 

Oh, gods. Could this day literally get any worse? “That’s my uncle. My father has concerns about my safety after the mugging.” 

“I’m not sure I’d call...wait, was anything stolen?” 

“Besides my boyfriend’s _eye_?” Claude snaps, then realizes he’s being a dick and shakes his head. “No, Dima -- Dimitri, um, Prince Dimitri and I -- we were mugged at the beginning of the year. Didn’t Edelgard tell you?” 

The cop looks concerned. “You mean there’s been a prior assault on both you and the Crown Prince before?” He huffs. “No one tells me anything.” 

_Or maybe that’s because no one knew about it. Maybe no one ever called the cops._ “Hey, how’s Edelgard?” 

“Ms. von Hresvelg is.” He clears his throat. He actually looks like he’s sharing Claude’s day, a little. “Physically, she’s fine. Just a little, ah. Worried about her step-brother.” 

“Is she still --” 

_”KHALID!_ ” 

Oh, no. Claude presses his palms into his eyes, heedless of the mess he’s making of his makeup. The cop said Nader was looking for him, but not that he was _here_. 

And there he is, Nader the Undefeated at Being Loud and Yelling, striding down the hall in full Almyran traditional garb and looking like a rapidly descending storm. “Khalid!” He says Claude’s name the proper way, and it makes Claude immediately flash back to being a mischief-prone child whose half-brother always tattled on him. “Uncle Nader,” he says, in Almyran. “Please stop before they think you’re here to kill me.” 

“I tried to learn Almyran on Duolingo,” the cop says, and he actually takes a half-step back before he remembers _he’s the cop_ and moves in front of Claude. “ _Please, the hat dog sells things at the market, sir_.” 

Nader stops in his tracks. “What nonsense is this person spouting, Khalid?” 

“Damn it,” the cop mumbles, then tries, “I am a student from Fodlan. How many kids.” 

“My uncle can speak Fodlan,” Claude says, and he’d laugh but suddenly he remembers Dimitri practicing literally the same lesson with him just two days ago, and gods, Dimitri, he’s -- 

“You seem too old be a student,” Nader says, his Fodlan accented but clear. “But I have two children, thank you for asking. I am Nader, His Majesty King Malik’s advisor and uncle to...Khalid, what are you wearing?” 

“Club clothes,” Claude says. “Could you stop yelling? We’re in a hospital.” 

“I’m not yelling,” his uncle says. “But I will call your father and say I have found you.” 

Claude turns beseeching eyes on the cop. “Do you have room for me in prison? I’ll help you out with that Almyran.” 

The cop snorts, then looks concerned. “Do you feel unsafe with your uncle?” 

Claude almost says _yes_ because of the impending lecture he’s going to get, then remembers that he doesn’t need to cause an international incident by implying his uncle is some kind of untrustworthy, shifty criminal. They already have stupid ideas about Almyra here, he’s not going to make it worse. “No, I’m...my dad’s, just. He’s louder than him,” he says, jerking a thumb toward his uncle, speaking in rapid Almyran on the phone to Malik. “Can I go back and sit with my boyfriend?” 

Before Nader can drag him off, or the policeman answers, the door at the end of the hallway bangs open. 

“Please, we can’t just -- you need to wait for --” 

This admonition is followed by a stampede, as Felix, Sylvain, Dedue, and Ingrid appear one after the other in the hallway. They zero in on Claude, apparently ignoring the strange sight of a man in full Almyran garb talking on a cell phone and the cop who is just sort of staring at them. 

“Von Riegan, what the fuck,” greets Felix. 

“Where’s His Highness?” Dedue demands. 

“I--” Claude starts, but the cop clears his throat. 

“This isn’t really how we’re going to do this,” the cop says. “How did you even get up here?” he sounds like he would have preferred a drawn-out hostage negotiation to this. Claude can’t blame him. 

Felix pushes past Claude and into Dimitri’s room, where he makes a sound that best resembles a wounded animal. “What the hell happened to his eye?” 

Three things happen in quick succession; 

The cop, saying in a firm voice, “I would really appreciate it if all of you could maybe. Get out and into the hallway?” 

His uncle, holding the phone out and saying in a voice made ominous because it’s actually quiet, “Your father wishes to speak with you, Khalid.” 

And then, Felix Fraldarius comes marching out of the crown prince’s hospital room, grabs Claude and snarls, “You son of a _bitch_ , what _happened_?” before punching him in the face. 

***

“I said I was sorry,” Felix mutters, leaning against the wall, flexing his hand.

“Technically, you didn’t,” Claude mutters, but it comes out muffled from beneath the rag he has pressed against his bloody nose. 

The cop, who is now in the hospital room -- the one next to Dimitri’s -- with them, sighs. “I gotta admit, I thought royalty and the nobility would be a lot less. Punchy.” 

Sylvain, who is standing next to Felix, gives the cop a pitying look. “We’re basically terrible people, don’t you read the tabloids?” 

“Speak for yourself,” Felix mutters. 

“You just punched the Crown Prince’s boyfriend in the face,” Sylvain reminds him. 

“He deserved it.” 

“I’m not sure that’s fair,” says Ingrid, from the window. Dedue, who decided to let them all act like rowdy children, is in with Dimitri. “I’m going to call Mercie so she can text Ashe and Annette. Claude, I’ll let Leonie know where you are.” 

Great, everyone else can ask him questions later, that’s perfect. Claude manages a stuffed-up, “Thanks, Ingrid.” 

“It’s fine. And for the record, I meant it when I said I didn’t think it was fair that Felix punched you. But if I decide it was? I’ll finish what he started and really break your nose.” 

“Go ahead,” Claude says, glumly. “It’s all my fault anyway.” 

“I knew it --” Felix pushes off the wall, but Sylvain performs a truly heroic maneuver and springs into action, getting an arm around Felix’s waist and pulling him hard against him. 

“Nope,” says Sylvain. “No more hitting. Felix. _Felix_. Dimitri wouldn’t want you to do that.” 

“I don’t care, Dimitri’s clearly an idiot or he wouldn’t be --” Felix stops, breathing hard, his eyes going strangely glassy. He pushes hard at Sylvain. “Let me _go_.” He wriggles out of Sylvain’s hold and darts like a cat out of the room. 

“Sylvain, you should go after him,” Ingrid says, sounding as tired as Claude feels. “I’ll wait here.” 

Sylvain nods, then gives Claude a sympathetic smile. “It’s fine. He’ll get over it, it’s Felix. It’s just how he is.” 

Maybe, but Claude’s not so sure about that. Still, he gives Sylvain a nod before Sylvain leaves, followed by the cop who is muttering about no one having any _sense_ , and then Ingrid says, softly, “It’s just. Felix’s brother, he was killed in the line of duty with Dimitri’s father.” 

Claude remembers that conversation with his father, which feels like it was a million years ago even though it wasn’t. “Right. Something about a - a museum?” 

Ingrid nods. “Yeah. Glenn and Dimitri and King Lambert were there to do some kind of, you know, ceremonial thing. About ancient weapons. And there was this gunman, and…” she swallows. “Felix’s brother, Glenn, he died pushing Dimitri out of the way. King Lambert was killed instantly but Glenn...he bled to death in front of Dimitri. It’s awful. I think Felix….” she shakes herself. “Sorry. I shouldn’t talk about that.” 

Claude takes the rag away and slides off the bed. “It’s okay.” 

“But Felix is a little...protective, of Dimitri.” 

“Yeah. I get it.” Claude shrugs, going for his usual breeziness and not really managing anything close. “Got me out of the angry dad phone call, anyway.” 

Ingrid slides a glance at him. “I know who you are.” 

An idiot in a lot of trouble, with a boyfriend missing an eye because he’s trying to play Boy Detective? Claude stares at her. “Do you.” 

“Yeah. Dimitri -- does he know?” 

“Yeah, he does.” Claude stares at the bloody rag in his hand. “I didn’t think this -- I don’t know. I just didn’t see _the answer to this mystery is a cult who are going to take your boyfriend’s eye_.” 

“Claude, it’s really not your fault. And he’s not dead.” Ingrid smiles at him, or tries. It’s not a very good try, really, but it’s the thought that counts. “He’s probably not even asleep, anymore. Want to go check?” 

Claude nods, and tosses the rag, washes his hands, and then scrubs his face with a tissue and some abrasive hand soap at the small sink in the hospital room. He has to talk to Dimitri, and then...if Dimitri wants nothing else to do with him, well, that’s fair. Claude wouldn’t honestly blame him. 

Something nags at him as he follows Ingrid out and into the hallway, toward the room where he can hear Dedue’s low voice and -- his heart races -- Dimitri’s. Something about ancient weapons and museums and how no one tries to assassinate constitutional monarchy figureheads in this day and age, but then Dimitri turns and catches sight of Claude there, in the doorway, and he _smiles_ , and suddenly can’t Claude can’t think of a single solitary thing that isn’t _oh, thank you, gods_. 

“Dima,” Claude chokes out, hurrying over. “Gods, Dima, I’m -- I’m so sorry, I didn’t --” 

Dimitri, pale-faced and his one good eye slightly red, reaches out and takes Claude’s hand. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Claude,” he says, because of course he does, of _course_ he would wake up in a hospital bed after being drugged and abducted and missing an _eye_ and be worried about _Claude_ , his perpetual troublemaker boyfriend who --

“What in the -- excuse _me_ , what is this, visit the hospital with your kindergarten class day? No? Then someone explain why there’s so much commotion in the hospital room of a patient who is supposed to be under _guard_ and also, _sleeping_!” Dr. Casagrande puts her hands on her hips and stares at all of them. “Out. Get out.” 

“It’s okay,” Dimitri says, gruffly. “I’m fine, Claude. You saved me. My knight in black fishnets and leather.” His voice is drowsy, a little slurred. He’s probably on painkillers. 

Claude doesn’t care. He leans in and kisses Dimitri, gently. “Yeah, always. Well. Me and your step-sister. She’s _terrifying_. Might ask for motorcycle lessons.” It’s a bad attempt at a joke, but Claude is also kind of crying, so. 

“What part of get out aren’t you getting?” Dr. Casagrande demands, but then she adds, “Not that this isn’t sweet. Nice skirt. But still. Seriously. Go.” 

Ingrid, Dedue and Claude file out after they assure a dazed Dimitri they’ll be back. Dr. Casagrande sighs. 

The second they get out of the room, Claude’s uncle materializes and silently hands him his phone. 

Claude brings it up to his ear. “Hi, Dad.” 

“Khalid, you are coming home. Right _now_ ,” yells the king of Almyra, right in his ear. “The last time I checked, we don’t have any _death cults_ at _our_ colleges, _and_ we have better classes in _math_ \--” 

Claude sighs.

***

Byleth walks into the small hous and closes the door behind him, toes off his boots and walks silently into the bedroom. “I’m back from the hospital. Do you want tea?” 

The bathroom door opens, and Jeritza walks out -- hair wet, a towel wrapped low around his hips, fresh from his shower. “Yes. But I will make it, beloved. You should rest. How is the prince? Which one was it? The brute or the talker?” 

“He’s not a brute,” Byleth says, shaking his head. 

“You should see him with a sword. No finesse. Needs a mace.” Jeritza walks over and looks down his fine, patrician nose at him. “Well?” 

“Blaiddyd,” Byleth says. “But the other one was involved. Not hurt. Well.” He thinks about it for a moment. “Fraldarius punched him in the face.” 

Jeritza looks a little pleased. Felix is his favorite student. “Maybe it will teach von Riegan to move his feet faster.” 

Byleth has to smile, but he sobers after a moment. “Blaiddyd lost an eye. We should --” 

Jeritza stops him with a finger pressed against Byleth’s mouth. “You look exhausted. And you are all dirty. Have a shower, change your clothes. I will make the tea. Then you can tell me what you’ve learned.” 

Byleth stays quiet and nods, allowing the caretaking even though it feels odd to let someone do it for him. He strips his clothes, which are dirty from crawling around looking for an underground crypt and then finding it -- empty, sadly enough -- and takes a nice long shower. When he’s finished, he pulls on a pair of sweats and one of Jeritza’s t-shirts, this one sporting an image from his favorite bands, Death Knight. The grim visage of a helmeted knight on a black horse is soft and well-worn, and while Byleth is slowly coming around to Jeritza’s love of melodic death metal, he definitely approves of this shirt. It’s a little too big, ridiculous, with the scary imagery belying how soft it is on the inside. 

Kind of like Jeritza. 

Byleth sits on the pillow as Jeritza, in loose pants with his hair unbound and no shirt, carries in a tray of tea and Byleth’s favorite shortbread cookies. “Here.” 

“I saw Nader at the hospital,” Byleth says, taking his tea. “Here for Claude, I’m sure.” 

“Should we hide the bow?” Jeritza asks, immediately concerned with the weapons. 

“No. He’s an honorable man. I won that off him fair and square.” Byleth pauses, dipping a cookie in his tea. “A few other things he doesn’t know about, maybe. I don’t know if he saw me, though.” 

Byleth was very good at being practically invisible when he needed to be. He also was able to gather information simply by looking at people; for all he was called strange and unnerving, people sure did like to tell him things. He recounts his evening and what he knows to Jeritza, who listens intently and sips his tea. 

“What do you think this is about?” Jeritza asks. “Do not spill tea on my favorite shirt, Byleth.” 

“I’m not sure. But I’m meeting with my father later, in town.” He smiles. “And I won’t.” 

Jeritza’s fair eyebrows raise. “In town? Do you feel unsafe meeting your father here, beloved?” His low, dreamy voice gets a little sharper, pointed like one of his swords. 

Byleth smiles at him. He likes everything about Jeritza, from his strange stillness to his winter eyes to the way he sings in shower, to how sometimes he kisses Byleth and murmurs, “In another world, we could have met on the battlefield,” and thinks it’s romantic. And sometimes he plays songs on the cello that may or may not be from popular bands, the upbeat rhythms dragged out into something mournful and melodic like his favorite death metal bands. 

“What?” 

“I feel safe,” Byleth says. “Because I carry four knives at all times and can kill a person with my bare hands. But my father, he thinks it’s a conflict of interest if he talks about work while on school grounds.” 

“Five,” Jeritza says. “You carry five knives.” 

“Ah.” Byleth smiles at him, pleased. “You noticed that one.” 

“I notice everything about you. Especially the deadly things.” Jeritza sips his tea. “What are we going to do, then?” 

Byleth thinks, staring down at his tea. “We keep an eye on them. Make sure no one tries to hurt them again. They’re onto something, von Riegan and Blaiddyd. They are too impulsive, though. We should probably make sure they don’t end up dead.” 

Jeritza doesn’t really look too concerned, but he shrugs and says, “My sister is fond of Blaiddyd. I suppose that’s fine.” 

Byleth settles. “Good. And I think I’ll take a look around the President’s office, later. Want to come with me?” Jeritza was an excellent partner in crime. He was so quiet, people hardly ever knew he was there. 

“If you wish,” Jeritza says, and sets down his teacup. “Why the President’s office?” 

“Because whatever is going on, I think she knows more than she’s telling the police.” Byleth shrugs. He’s seen plenty of cults in his day, and they’re usually two kinds; the sort people join for sex and power and money, and the sort that really thinks they can do whatever wild thing it is they’re claiming they can do -- good _or_ bad. In Byleth’s experience, it’s the second that’s the most dangerous. 

His mom would know all about that. 

***

Dimitri lies back on his hospital bed, listening to the thrum of monitors and the rattle of pipes in the ceiling, and wonders exactly how long he’ll have to wait before he can safely check himself out after surgery. He doesn’t want to be here, in this silent, empty room with a policeman outside the door and a frankly terrifying doctor keeping the rest of the world at bay. He wants to be in the living room at the Blue Lions house, watching Felix and Sylvain try to pretend like they aren’t holding hands under the throw blanket, Ashe anxiously advising Ingrid not to pile her Frankenstein’s monster of a sub _quite_ so high, Mercie listening to some obscure death metal band while Annette does her homework and Dedue tries not to watch Ashe out of the corner of his eye. He wants Claude sprawled against him, making ridiculous jokes as they watch one of Annette’s terrible horror films. He doesn’t want to think about his eye, or the dark, or the bones on the basement floor, spread out like wings to embrace him.

He considers texting Claude, but his phone is charging on the other end of the room, and the last time Dimitri got up, a sensor went off and a harried-looking nurse swept in to push him back down onto the bed. So he just stares at it for a moment, and tries not to notice how he has to turn his head to see the rest of the room, and tries to swallow the building panic that comes after, like always— _it’s gone, they took it, they took your eye, they would have taken more and it’s gone, you didn’t even bloody any of them in return_ —

“Excuse me. Mr. Blaiddyd.”

Dimitri jerks slightly, one hand clenching on the guard rail of his bed, as a woman appears at the doorway. It takes a moment to recognize her. President Rhea, the head of the college for the past thirty years running, looks remarkably young for her age, and her pale green hair is pulled smartly in a bun out of her unnervingly glassy eyes. Her pantsuit looks like something out of the films Glenn used to put on when Dimitri was young, with women in neon blazers with high shoulderpads and massive hair. The shoulders are definitely padded a bit too high, but the blue of her suit is soft, and she smiles down at Dimitri with a look that can almost be called fond, of it weren’t for her unchanging, expressionless eyes. There’s something familiar about that, he thinks, something strange, but then Rhea pats his foot and pulls up a chair next to his bed.

“Good afternoon, Dimitri,” she says. “I can call you Dimitri, can I?”

“Oh. Yes. Of course.”

Rhea smiles. Her eyes don’t waver. Dimitri looks down at her hands instead, soft and covered in flashy silver rings. One almost looks like a dragon, its spiked tail locking two fingers together, and Dimitri stares at it, trying to make out the shape of its wings. 

“It’s good to know your surgery went well,” Rhea says. Her voice is melodious, gentle, and she lays one of her ringed hands on the railing next to Dimitri’s. “Though I’m sure it must be hard, losing your eye.”

“I… I’m alright,” Dimitri says, like he always does. Rhea’s fingers tap on the rail. One of her rings has a long chain hanging from it, which clinks rhythmically against the metal. “They say I’ll be ready for a proper prosthetic in about a month—“

“And to think,” Rhea says. Her fingers are cold as iron as she lays both hands over Dimitri’s. “There was a _cult_ in my college. A group of foolish students pulling a prank too far, I’m sure—perhaps I should ban the pagan coalition after all. It’s an awful business.” 

“Y-yes,” Dimitri says. “I… did you hear there were… I recall there were bones?”

“Bones? I didn’t see that in the police report.” Rhea pats his knuckles. “I worry about you, Dimitri. You’re such an upstanding student, and now you’re going to clubs and getting roped into… human sacrifices or death cults or whatever this nonsense was. Is it… that boy you’re with?”

“What?” Dimitri finally looks up. Her brows are lowered in concern, but her gaze is sharp, probing. “No, Claude’s. Claude’s great, he had nothing to do with this—“

“Of course he didn’t. I just… I know how it can be, Dimitri.” She squeezes his hand. “Grief. It never really leaves us, you know. You can get by for a while, but then the ghosts come back to you, and you feel as though you have to do something to keep them at bay. Sometimes it’s romantic flings, or drugs—“

“Ma’am, I assure you—“

“If you need to talk,” Rhea says, still staring at him, her eyes like ice and her smile warm and inviting, “I’m here. I lost someone myself, long ago. I know how it feels to want to drive the memories out.”

“That isn’t what happened,” Dimitri says, but Rhea just keeps smiling. She gives his hand one last pat and stands up, and for a moment, with her standing over him, light glinting off her rings and shining in her pale green hair, Dimitri’s blood runs cold.

“My office is open any time you need me,” Rhea says. 

It isn’t until she leaves the room that Dimitri realizes he’s been holding his breath.

Well. If the president of the college can waltz right in and talk about death cults and grief, there’s no reason Dimitri can’t request someone else. He lurches out of bed, the sensor beeps, and Dimitri whips around to glare at it. His eye socket throbs as his brows lower, and he holds back a curse. By the time the all-too-attentive nurse is back, Dimitri is climbing into bed with his phone tucked under his arm.

“I apologize,” he says, as she sighs and checks the sensor one more time. “I needed to retrieve my phone. Do you think I can request a visitor?”

“You have a list,” the nurse says. “But you can only have one person in this room at a time, and when visiting hours are over, that’s it. Got it? Same rules apply to princes and plumbers, kiddo.”

“Yes,” Dimitri says, carefully. “But plumbers are useful.”

The nurse rolls her eyes. “Two of you. I can’t believe we have _two_ of you. We’ve got a prince in a skirt and a rugby sweater downstairs, a prince who doesn’t know how to sit _still_ upstairs…”

Dimitri sighs. “I did apologize. Could you… can the prince you mentioned…” He supposes Claude’s chance at keeping his identity a secret is likely moot by now. “Can Prince Khalid come up, then?”

“If you stay where you are,” the nurse says, and Dimitri raises both hands in surrender. She stares at him for a moment, disbelieving, and sweeps out of the room.

Claude comes in almost a minute later, looking flushed and breathless. There are shadows under his eyes—though it could be the makeup, which is a smudged ruin on his cheeks—and he’s wearing one of Dimitri’s sweaters, the one Dimitri left in Claude’s room just last week. The sweater almost covers his miniskirt entirely, and Dimitri wonders if all Claude did was rush into the dorm, grab the sweater, and rush out. 

“Hey, you wanted to—“ Claude scratches the side of his jaw. “Are you okay?”

“Better, now that you’re here,” Dimitri says. Claude’s face twists, slightly, as though he’s trying not to cry. “Claude?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s. I’m glad you’re feeling. Okay.” Claude takes the chair Rhea had been sitting in and grasps Dimitri’s arm. “I know I already said it, but Dima, I’m—“

“You should wear that sweater more often,” Dimitri says. “It suits you.”

Claude’s voice dies in his throat, and Dimitri reaches out to brush the messy curls out of his eyes. He’s really rather young, Dimitri realizes. They both are. It’s hard to remember that, sometimes, when Dimitri knows that he only has another year or two before his uncle steps down, when he’s always been so. So distant, since the shooting. Felix and Sylvain and Ingrid, they’ve all found a way to fit into this world, to fuck around and make mistakes, but Dimitri’s always held himself apart. It wasn’t until he met Claude that he really started to feel his age, and he wonders what he could have been if the shooter had missed. If he hadn’t struck Glenn, or his father.

“You know,” Dimitri says. “They say the knife I was holding when you found me disappeared.”

Claude just shrugs. His eyes are dull, uninterested, and Dimitri recognizes something of himself there, of the boy who had lain in bed for a week before Felix dragged him out by the collar. He doesn’t like seeing it there. He leans forward, tips up Claude’s chin.

“Don’t you find that curious?” Dimitri asks.

“Dima, I don’t think… I’ve already dragged you too far into this. I. I can’t.”

Dimitri pulls him in for a kiss, but Claude still won’t meet his gaze. “They would have done it anyways, Claude. It was planned. All your intervention did was ensure that I didn’t die down there.”

Claude laughs hollowly, still staring down at Dimitri’s other hand in the rail, and runs his fingers over Dimitri’s knuckles. “You’re too good for me, Dimitri. It’s all gone to hell, and you’re here, trying to make me feel better, when you… when they even… they even took your ring, didn’t they?”

Dimitri freezes. “What?”

“Your ring.” Claude finally looks up, brows furrowed, and lifts Dimitri’s hand in his. Dimitri’s breath hitches at the sight of his bare fingers against Claude’s. “They must have taken it during the… Dimitri?”

“I had it,” Dimitri says. “I had it this morning. I _remember,_ when I woke up from the surgery, and the doctor was telling me about the, the. Eye. I kept touching it, because it always. Always calms me…” He looks over the edge of the bed, and the rail rattles alarmingly.

“Hold on,” Claude says. “I’ll look, okay? Could it have fallen off?”

“No, it’s almost too small, now,” Dimitri says. His breath is coming shorter—He clutches his hand, twisting the skin of his finger. “I meant to have it resized, but I—you don’t think? Someone could have?”

“You’ve had a lot of people coming in and out, sure, but they’re all friends,” Claude says. He gets on his hands and knees, searching under the bed. “It’s probably in the corner somewhere, Dimitri. Don’t worry, I’ll… huh. Uh. At least Fodlan hospitals are clean, but… maybe it got kicked behind…”

The bed thumps as Claude clambers under it. Only his legs can be seen from where Dimitri is sitting, but he’s too anxious to admire the fact that the skirt isn’t quite long enough to cover Claude’s ass, and his fishnets are definitely ripped along the thigh. Instead, Dimitri leans on the railing and tries to look around Claude, his bare hand flexing.

“Well,” someone says. “Is this a new royal mating ritual I haven’t heard of?”

Dimitri jumps—So does Claude, and he curses darkly in Almyran as his head collides with the bed. Dimitri pats his backside sympathetically—It’s the only part of him he can reach, really—and turns to find Edelgard climbing into the hospital room from the open window, dressed sensibly in denim and a leather, strapless top. She drops down from the ledge, leans over to look down the four flight sheer drop below, and raises an eyebrow.

“The fuck,” Claude says, from under the bed.

“Yeah, I bet you’re feeling a certain way, Prince Charming,” Edelgard says. She dusts off her jeans and gives Dimitri a once-over. “You look like shit, Dimitri.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri says. “You look well.”

“Sure. I spent most of last night digging around in basements and calling Mom, but sure. Let’s go with _well._ ”

“You spoke with Patricia?” Dimitri sits up. “Is she—“

“Not right now.” Edelgard glances at the door, which is still opened a crack, and strides over. Claude drags himself out from under the bed just as she gets there, and he and Dimitri both flinch as she reaches down the collar of her shirt.

“Oh my gods, you fucking infants,” she says, and pulls out something wrapped in cloth. She drops it on Dimitri’s legs, and Claude curses again.

A knife lies there, ornate and pale and terribly familiar.

“You had that between your _breasts,_ ” Dimitri says.

“Won’t be the first time.”

“The fuck,” Claude says, again. 

Edelgard sighs loudly and picks up the knife. “Thought you might want to know,” she says. “And no, I’m not telling the cops. Some of them might be in on it, I think.”

Claude’s voice is low, and he grabs Dimitri’s arm, fingers clenched right. “In on what, Edelgard.”

“I don’t know,” Edelgard says. “But I’m going to find out.” She fixes both of them with a firm glare and draws back. “I’m going to see if I can find anyone who can recognize this. It’s practically an antique. You two, when you’re done here, come to my dorm and we’ll talk.”

She turns to go, but Claude intercepts her before she can make it to the door. “No,” he says. 

Edelgard presses her lips together.

“You owe us an explanation,” Claude says. “Something here isn’t adding up, and every time there’s a, a gap in what we know, or what other people know, you’re there. If you’re getting involved in this—“

“We’ll do it together,” Dimitri says. Edelgard and Claude both look at him, and he blushes faintly. “If we’re doing this, we’ll do it together. All three of us, El.”

El gives him a long, steady look, and nods almost imperceptibly.

“Fine.”

“Besides,” Dimitri says, settling back against his pillow. “Give me a day to recover, and I’ll bet we can find just the man to ask about a knife.”

***

When Claude gets back from the hospital, the entire Golden Deer dorm is waiting for him. 

For a second, Claude thinks it’s because of Dimitri. So he says, “Don’t worry, he’s okay,” and then, when they all just keep _staring_ , he remembers the other thing that happened as a result of the thwarted cult attempt -- he’s no longer incognito as far as his identity. He sighs.   
“Can I at least change, first?” 

“Um,” says Leonie. Her eyes are wide. “Just. Do we. Have to like, bow or….?” 

Claude’s face goes hot and he shakes his head. “No? I mean. Just, you know.” He waves a hand. “I’m the same person I was before.” 

Lysithea is glaring at him as if keeping his identity a secret was a personal affront he’d orchestrated just to trick her specifically. “I mean, it’s not like it would have made us treat you any differently. If you’d told us the truth.” 

“It wasn’t that,” Claude says, a little defensively. “I mean, maybe a little, but I decided to use a different name before I’d met any of you.” He pulls the sleeves of Dimitri’s sweater down and over his hands. 

Lysithea’s arms cross. “And were you ever gonna tell us?” 

All Claude wants is to get out of his torn fishnets and miniskirt, shower, and get a few hours sleep before meeting up with Edelgard and Dimitri. “I don’t know, Lys. I mean, maybe? I wanted you guys to like me -- or not like me -- for me, not ‘cause of who my dad is.” 

Claude glances over at Hilda, who is leaning against the wall and pulling at strands of her long pink hair. They’d gotten close, fast, and he’s more worried about her being annoyed at him than anyone. 

But before he can even stammer out an excuse or an apology, she laughs. “I can’t _believe_ I’m the only one who figured it out,” and Claude just _stares_ at her, unsure if he’s surprised or delighted or what that she’d already known he was the Almyran Crown Prince. “I think I _am_ kind of insulted you thought I was dumb enough not to know who you were, given where I’m from. I used to have this picture of you on my _wall_. This poster from _Teen Alliance_.” 

Lysithea snickers. Claude’s face goes hot. One of his half-brothers had tacked that picture up with devil horns and a few other unflattering additions. Jerks. 

“At least I understand why you got that internship,” Lorenz says, studying his nails. “I knew it couldn’t be because you were smarter than me.” 

“Claude’s pretty smart,” Raphael says, though he ruins it by adding, “Even though I’m not real sure he doesn’t get dressed in the dark. What are you _wearing_ , bro? The bottom half of you really don’t match the top half. Isn’t that how, like, dressing is supposed to work?” 

“You look nice in that color blue,” Ignatz says, then adds, “um, your -- prince-y ness? What do we call a prince? I’ve never met one before. Or, I guess Dimitri, but he just says to call him Dimitri.” 

“Call this one _Claude_ , please,” Claude says, a little desperately. “But I can’t stress enough how much I need a shower.” 

“We can tell,” Hilda says. “Your makeup is offending me.” 

“Um.” Marianne peeks at Claude. “Are you all right? We heard some rumors that people were hurt.” 

Claude has to lean forward to hear her, but he nods. “I’m fine. I -- can we meet up in like, twenty minutes, though? I really need a shower.” 

“Twenty minutes, common room,” Leonie orders. “Everyone, snacks and pj’s and pillows. Claude, or whoever you are, don’t fall asleep in the shower. We want to know what’s going on.” 

As much as Claude really just wants to shower and crawl into bed, he knows his friends deserve the whole story -- and not just the part about his real name. The last thing he wants is any of them ending up in the hospital like his boyfriend. 

Claude sighs. “Make it thirty mintues, and I’m going to need coffee.” 

“Twenty five, and you’re on,” says Leonie, and finally, _finally,_ they all move aside so Claude can go into his room. 

He strips methodically out of his clothes, grabs clean underwear, a t-shirt and Dimitri’s sweater, and a towel, shrugging into his bathrobe and heading in flip-flops down the hall. He can hear the others moving around, grabbing snacks and pillows and moving in and out of their rooms as they head to the common area for their Leonie-mandated sleepover. 

Claude thought he would be exhausted, but by the time he’s showered and dressed, face and teeth scrubbed clean, his mind is once again spinning with too many thoughts and he probably wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Might as well be with friends. 

By the time he gets to the common room, he has to laugh; the furniture has been pushed aside, the floor strewn with pillows and blankets, and there are snacks piled high on the counter with the community microwave. Ignatz is making popcorn bag after popcorn bag, pouring them into bowls and shaking some powdered toppings over each bowl before handing them off to Raphael to carry over. 

Hilda is painting Marianne’s nails, staring at her with a look that Claude recognizes as one he often gives Dimitri, and that’s something he’s going to have to ask her about, given how he’s pretty sure she’s still sleeping with Edelgard. Lysithea is eating frosting out of the container, ignoring Lorenz, who’s going about processed sugar in between criticizing Hilda’s color choices for nail polishes. 

Claude stands at the door and smiles at them, full of affection. “Hey.” 

“Hey, yourself,” Hilda says, smiling. “Come on, I’ll do your nails. Mari’s are drying.” 

Claude pads in and plops down on a pillow next to her. Normally he’d tease her about the _Mari_ thing, either through a sneaky text message or a look, but instead he reaches an arm out and pulls her in for a hug. “I didn’t think you were dumb, I just thought you didn’t care about politics.” 

“I care about hot princes, duh,” she says, snuggling next to him. “Speaking of, how’s Dimitri?” 

Everyone goes quiet, drifting over -- Raphael with two bowls of popcorn that may, or may not, be to share, Lorenz with a bottle of bright burgundy polish and Lysithea with her frosting, and Ignatz with cups and a two-liter of soda -- a hold-over until the coffee is finished brewing. Leonie is last, with some kind of project to keep her hands busy as usual, which this time is a set of patches she’s sewing on a bag. “Ingrid’s birthday present,” she says, when she sees Claude looking. 

“Are you two even dating?” Lysithea asks, around her spoon of frosting. Watching her eat that makes Claude’s teeth hurt. 

“We’re talking,” Leonie says, shiftily. 

“Yeah, I saw you two _talking_ outside the dorm when I was coming back from my pagan group meeting,” Lysithea says. She brings up another heaping spoonful of icing. “I didn’t know people could listen with their tongues.” 

“I’m not going to take shit from someone eating Funfetti icing with a spoon,” Leonie huffs. “Claude, out with it, what happened?” 

“Okay, I need you guys to promise you won’t --” Claude stops as Hilda clears her throat abruptly, glancing toward the door. He looks up and hides a groan as he notices who’s standing there -- his uncle Nader, dressed in the same traditional Almyran garb as he was in the hospital, fixing his nephew with a sharp glare. 

“Um,” Marianne says, softly. “Does anyone...know who that is?”

“It’s my uncle,” Claude says, sighing. He gets to his feet, careful not to mess up the sparkly black polish on his right hand, and walks over to his uncle. “Is everything okay?” he asks, in Almyran. 

His uncle’s dark eyes flicker around the room. “I am here to keep an eye on you. Your father’s orders.” 

“I’m fine,” Claude says. “No one’s going to get in here, not with all of us.” 

“Yes,” Nader says, dryly. “I am sure if a cultist who wished to harm you showed up, your friends could...put polish on their nails, feed them whatever that girl is eating?” 

“Could I just have like, some time with my friends, please?” Claude knows everyone is staring at them. “Please, Uncle Nader. I know you have to be here --” 

“Thank you,” Nader says, as dry as the Almyran desert. “I’m sure what you meant to say, is that you understand you are the _crown prince of Almyra_ and are lucky your father isn’t demanding you come home.” 

He had, actually, but Claude managed to talk him out of it; he’d tried spinning it as maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have an entire college and a prince in his debt, even though he’s sure his father saw right through that. Nader was going to stay, Claude knew that, but he hadn’t realized that meant he was going to lurk in the doorway of his dorm’s common room. 

“I’m glad, really, I just...need some time to tell them what’s up,” Claude says. 

“I can paint your nails, Claude’s uncle,” Hilda calls, from the floor. “Oh, sorry. I mean, Khalid’s uncle.” 

“We have popcorn,” Ignatz offers. “If you like that.” 

Nader glances at him, then sighs. He gives a slight bow. “I will respect your privacy, Khalid.” In heavily-accented Fodlan, he says to the room, “Thank you for being true friends for his highness, King Malik will appreciate your loyalty.” 

“Um,” says Ignatz, sounding dazed. “S-sure.” 

Lysithea shrugs and eats her frosting. Marianne blushes and looks down, saying something softly about Almyran cats that Claude can’t quite follow, and everyone makes a strange sort of noncommittal noise until Nader drifts out of the doorway and, presumably, to Claude’s room, where he will wait for Claude to get back. 

“Okay,” Claude says, after a moment. “Here’s what’s going on. I need you guys to promise you won’t do anything rash, though --” 

“Like, I dunno, dressing up in a mask and chasing after cultists without telling anyone?” Hilda asks, sweetly. 

“Yeah,” Claude says, wearily. “Just like that.” 

“I’m not as dumb as you,” Lysithea says, bluntly. “So, no worries.” 

“I’m sorry,” Ignatz says, sounding miserable. “Please tell me it’s not a, a crime in Almyra to make masks that get the prince in danger.” 

“It isn’t,” Claude says, around the handful of popcorn he shoved into his mouth. 

“I don’t even know what’s going on, but I’ve got too many classes to keep up with for my scholarship to deal with cults. Important stuff for my _future_ , so I don’t want to end up suspended over nonsense,” Leonie huffs, jabbing her needle into the patch of a cat riding a taco over a rainbow. 

“I’m certainly not getting trouble over _you_ ,” Lorenz says, but there’s a slight hint of doubt in his voice, like maybe he _would_ and he doesn’t know what to think about that. 

“No promises,” Hilda says, shrugging. “Cults are way more interesting than any of my classes.” 

“Yeah, but...sorry, bro, but I don’t think I’m gonna look very good in a skirt,” says Raphael. 

Claude looks at Marianne. She blushes and says softly, “I don’t want anything bad to happen but...I can help, if you need me.” 

“And you would look _great_ in that miniskirt,” Hilda says, her eyes practically turning into hearts. 

Claude smiles at them all, touched. “Thanks, guys. All right, buckle in. So, it all started with the mugging…”


	9. Chapter 9

Professor Byleth pours tea into a thermos covered in a pattern of skulls and chubby, candy-themed unicorns, examines it with a curious air, and takes a sip.

Across the table, Edelgard grips a mug shaped like a clown face, which she won't look at for more than a fleeting second. Claude is drinking out of a mug made to look like a cat, and Dimitri’s cup is of a garish fast-food mascot, with a speech bubble that says, _I went to Ylisse and all I got was amnesia and a husband._ Which probably means something, but the painkillers are starting to wear off and Dimitri feels like a human pulse, pain rising and falling with the beat of his heart.

“I’m sorry about this,” Byleth says. “We had an accident in the kitchen.”

Edelgard looks down at the grinning clown face in her hands, shudders, and twists the mug around. “May I ask… what kind of accident?”

“Fencing,” Byleth says. He takes a sip.

Dimitri, Edelgard, and Claude exchange wary looks. 

“Oh.”

“I did save my favorites beforehand, at least,” Byleth says, and Edelgard’s mouth twists. Claude nearly pokes himself in the cheek with the ears at the top of his mug.

In the center of the table, right next to a book stuffed with ripped paper bookmarks and a pot of sugar packets, the knife that took Dimitri’s eye gleams in the overhead light. Byleth hasn’t spared it more than a passing glance since Edelgard placed it on the table, and when he gets up to put away his thermos, Dimitri wonders if he’s going to ignore it until they sheepishly make their excuses and slink out the door. But then, Edelgard has never been sheepish in her life, and Claude’s jaw is set in the stern, grin expression on his official royal portrait, the one on Dimitri’s lock screen.

Dimitri looks down at his phone. He swipes it on, and Claude’s stern look is replaced with a picture of him laughing over Dimitri’s shoulder, arms wrapped around his chest. Dimitri’s eyes are both closed, like they are in half the photos anyone takes of him, and Dimitri only just resists touching the gauze over his missing eye.

Byleth comes back in wearing blue gloves, and Claude straightens in his seat. Byleth sits down and lifts up the knife to the light.

“Not the kind of knife you kill someone with,” he says, after a while.

“What,” Edelgard says.

“This knife.” Byleth runs a thumb over the engravings on the hilt. “It’s ceremonial. Meant for bloodletting, sure, but you aren’t supposed to kill someone with it. Look, there’s the symbol of the Red Canyon here, just above the hilt. These were used in ceremonies of rebirth about three hundred years ago. You cut someone who’s about to give birth and spill the blood on a dead body, and the soul goes into the baby. Hypothetically,” he adds. “I never saw it in person.”

“Of course,” Dimitri says. “You wouldn’t have been able to.”

“Right, yes,” Byleth says, which isn’t incredibly comforting. “This is well-used, though. Maybe someone took it from a museum at first—You can see where it’s been polished, and someone touched up the paint here—but it hasn’t exactly been preserved.” He sets the knife down. “Were the cultists wearing gloves, at least?”

“I don’t know,” Dimitri says. “I was. Not myself.”

“Some were.” Edelgard stares into the wide-eyed clown mug, scraping her nails over the ceramic. Claude looks at her sharply. “It’s part of their uniform.”

“And how’d you know that?” Claude asks. Edelgard’s gaze slides his way, over Dimitri. “We’ve let you keep your secrets for a while, Edelgard, but this is Dimitri’s life we’re talking about.”

“Maybe you should worry about your own, your highness.” Edelgard’s voice is cold. Detached. The same voice she used when they were teens and she swore up and down she wasn’t wearing Dimitri’s jacket when he could _see it right on her._

“El,” Dimitri says. “Please.”

She lets out a harsh breath. “Maybe I know a little about them,” she says. “They’re always trying to pick off the theater kids, usually the freshmen who don’t have anywhere to go for the summer. I took an interest, you could say.”

“Edelgard always looks after the theater crew,” Dimitri whispers to Claude. “She’s like the. The theater mom.”

“ _Dimitri._ ”

“Oh, no,” Claude says, smiling into his mug. “I think it’s almost sweet, princess. So it’s a theatrical cult. That explains the masks.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Byleth says. “The masks are recreations of the ones the priests of Sothis used to wear, about… mm… I think it was fifteen hundred years ago. My memory’s a little fuzzy.”

They all take a moment to consider this. Dimitri wonders, briefly, if Byleth is their professor at all, or if he’s just some strange, bewildered ghost who drifted into campus and got a teaching job.

“So the ritual may actually be a thing,” Claude says. “With the… bones.”

“And the coffin,” Dimitri adds.

“They’re probably trying to bring someone back from the dead,” Byleth says, calmly, like this is something perfectly normal and not at all distressing to bring up over tea. “Or bring a soul into someone else’s body. Royal blood used to be considered especially potent in old rituals of the sort. You’ll all need to be careful.”

“All?” Edelgard snorts. “I’m not royal, I don’t need to—“

“Edelgard von Hresvelg,” Byleth says, and Edelgard’s face pales, slightly. “Your family came from the Adrestian royal family, didn’t they? Which in turn split off from the Faerghus royal family about seven hundred years ago. You could say you’re twice royal.”

Edelgard mutely drains her tea. Dimitri’s chest tightens at the thought of Edelgard or Claude at the hands of that strange woman with her upraised knife, the bones fanning about them like wings, and looks into Byleth’s glassy, distant eyes. 

“Then we’ll need to stick together,” he says. Edelgard chokes on her tea. “As much as possible, at least, until it’s over. Edelgard, I can stay at your dorm tonight—“

“No,” Edelgard coughs. “I have. I have a play to go to tonight.”

“Then we’ll be there,” Claude says, smiling brightly. Edelgard glowers, and her hand twitches on the table, as though she’s half considering taking up the knife herself. “After all, us royals have to stick together.”

***

“We should never have come here,” Dimitri whispers, some two hours later, blanketed in the cool darkness of the college theater. He’s shrinking into his seat, somewhat drifting on the fog of another half a pill of painkillers, but it isn’t enough to ignore what Annette and Mercedes are attempting to do on stage.

“Kyphon!” Annette cries. She’s wearing a makeshift crown of Faerghus, an incredibly long, dark blue cloak with what looks like a stuffed wolf plush pinned to the neck, and foam armor polished to a shine. Mercedes is wearing a makeshift recreation of Rodrigue Fraldarius’ ducal robes, and is lugging around a massive sword that looks a little too real. She heaves it over to Annette, who grabs her by the shoulders.

“Kyphon, my dearest friend, who’s cherry lips the frozen wind doth kiss, Flee! Flee, love, to Faerghus’ dark abyss!”

Mercedes’ voice booms out over the crowd. “Oh, Loog! Thy broadsword will I miss!”

“Wait,” Claude whispers. “I know this one. It was on TV sometimes when I was a kid. Isn’t this play the one about. You know. Felix’s great-great something and _your_ great-great something—“

“Don’t,” Dimitri says. “Please.”

“They even recreated it once,” Edelgard whispers, leaning over Dimitri to utterly betray him. “When they were in high school. It was cute.”

“No,” Dimitri says. “Gods. No. I’m not here. You never saw me here.”

“Aw, buddy,” Claude says, and kisses his temple. Edelgard squeezes his hand.

On stage, Lysithea storms in wearing a sea-green cape and a massive green wig. “Behold, young lovers!” she calls. Dimitri sinks further into his seat. “The winds doth blow, and the wolf doth howl, and thy broadswords shall dull shoulds’tn’t thou—“

“Shoulds’tn’t?” Claude whispers. “Yikes.”

Dimitri considers moving his eyepatch to the other eye.

“Let us embrace til morn!” Annette cries. “Oh lover bold, who from my breast’s unjustly shorn!”

Mercedes drags Annette behind a sheer curtain, where their silhouettes rearrange themselves so Loog is—oh, gods, so Loog is on his hands and knees.

“Wait,” Edelgard says. “They aren’t actually.”

“Oh my gods, they are,” Claude breathes.

“Oh, Loog!” Mercedes shouts, for the stonefaced crowd of theater students. “The fire of thy love burns ever bright!”

“They definitely weren’t doing this in the movie,” Claude whispers.

Dimitri oozes to the floor. Claude makes a sympathetic noise and drapes his jacket over Dimitri’s head, but Annette and Mercedes’ cries of affection are a little _too_ close to the sounds they make when they think no one else can hear them through their bedroom wall.

The floor shudders, and Claude mutters a curse in Almyran as Edelgard shifts beside them. Dimitri peers out from under the jacket to find Nader, Claude’s new… bodyguard, of a sort… sitting heavily on the other side of the bench.

“So,” he says, in a voice that is probably a bit too loud for theater. “You are taking in culture.”

Half the audience hisses at him for silence. Nader hisses back, laughs, and says something to Claude in Almyran. Claude blushes darkly.

“Tell him what I said,” Nader says, to another round of hissing. “Go on. It’s a good joke.”

Now, it’s Claude’s turn to shrink into his seat. Only Edelgard remains upright, smiling down at them with her brows raised.

“He says the swords are probably… bigger in the play than they used to be,” Claude mutters.

“Oh.” Dimitri thinks about it. “Oh, no, we had a recreation of Loog’s broadsword on the wall back home, and it’s about that size.”

“I love you,” Claude whispers, nonsensically, and ducks under the jacket to kiss him properly.

“Edelgard,” El says above them, as Dimitri, smiling, kisses Claude back. “Step-sister.”

“Yes, the scary one, my nephew says.”

Dimitri doesn’t have to look to know that Edelgard is preening.

In the end, Nader and Edelgard watch the rest of the play, while Claude pulls out his cell phone under the safety of the jacket, and the two of them play an app game about feeding cats in a monastery. They’ve nearly unlocked the famed Von Riegan calicos when the applause starts, and Edelgard smacks Dimitri lightly on the head to get him to rise. He applauds distantly, trying to ignore the fact that Annette has dipped Mercedes into yet another kiss in their Loog and Kyphon costumes, and Claude whistles through his fingers. Lysithea, dressed in wreaths of flowers and seashells, blushes pink.

“You know what,” Edelgard says, in a soft voice. “I kind of miss this.” 

Dimitri tries to raise his brows, winces, and tilts his head instead. 

“This,” Edelgard says again. “Going to plays together. We used to… do that more.”

Before the assassination. She doesn’t have to say it. Dimitri still remembers the nights his father and Edelgard would sneak out with their guards scrambling to catch up, Edelgard shaking Dimitri awake with her eyes bright and her smile wide. _Come on, doofus!_ The bags of popcorn and terrible mints, the horror movies Patricia refused to watch and had Dimitri coming to Edelgard’s bedroom, later, turning on all the lights as she groaned and threw stuffed animals at the door. Edelgard reading out of her school books to calm him down again. Passing out on her bedroom floor, surrounded by stuffed unicorns Edelgard would die rather than admit to loving.

“Yeah,” he says. He pulls her into a one-armed hug, and Edelgard stumbles into him. “Yeah, let’s do this again.”

***  
They end up in Edelgard’s dorm room, which is a single, and she presents them with a pipe and a look that says _don’t make this a thing._ Claude’s pretty sure Dimitri’s going to anyways, so he takes it, tries to look like he knows what he’s doing, and at least manages to fool Dimitri. 

“I. How do I. Do you inhale it,” Dimitri says, as he gingerly takes the pipe. 

Claude and Edelgard exchange looks. Edelgard sighs and flops down on the floor next to Dimitri, who blushes to his roots as she slowly takes a hit. She passes the pipe, and he looks at the lighter for a good ten seconds before Edelgard lights it for him. 

“Am I. Supposed to feel anything,” Dimitri says. 

“That’s a discussion you’re gonna have to have between you and your therapist, Dima,” Edelgard says. She turns on her phone, sets some ambient music that sounds like violins having a roundtable to discuss sacrificing a single cello to the altar of alternative folk, and picks up one of Dimitri’s arms so she can use it as a pillow. “So. Loog and Kyphon.”

“I’m making that play illegal, when I’m king,” Dimitri says. Claude settles on his other side, and Dimitri wraps an arm around his waist without thinking. He expected Edelgard’s room to be like a harsher, slightly more punk version of Lysithea’s, but all her books are placed in alphabetical order on the shelves, her desk is impeccably clean, there’s a wall calendar with helpful stickers and neat handwriting on the wall, and a bed with a flower-patterned quilt that looks almost as old as she is. 

Of course, there’s also the stack of placards, the flyers, the pop punk band posters lining the walls, and a wind chime made entirely of black crystal. 

And the cat.

“Oh, shit,” Edelgard says, and Dimitri’s eyes widen as she pulls an actual, fully grown tabby cat from under her bed. “This is Hubert Jr. Hold on, gotta give her back to Bernie while we’re, you know.”

“Okay, there you are,” Claude says, as Edelgard pushes open the door and crosses the hall to a room with ominous _Do Not Enter_ signs plastered over the wall. “Now I can believe you’re siblings.”

A pair of hands emerge from a crack in the door, take the cat, and disappear. “What do you mean?” Dimitri asks, handing the pipe and lighter to Claude. 

“That. She’s a lot, yeah, but she catsits illegal pets for people and she organizes her pens. Her pens, Dimitri.”

“It helps when you need a certain nib size,” Dimitri says, and Claude presses his forehead to Dimitri’s bicep and groans.

Edelgard comes back in and sets up her laptop on a stack of printer paper boxes. “I’ve got all the classics, but there’s a documentary on the Church of Seiros I think you’ll want to see, Dima, since the king works with the Church, and we all know it’s just--”

“An institution founded on the oppression of the working class,” Dimitri says. “Let’s watch the one about the fish, instead. The animated one.”

Edelgard sighs and pulls up an app on her computer. She drags the quilt off her bed--Dimitri makes a soft sound at the sight of it, and she glances to the side as he runs his hands over a patch of stitched tulips--and drapes it over their knees as the smell of smoke slowly fills the room. Claude drifts, slightly, wrapped in Dimitri’s arm, and Dimitri squints at the screen and hands the pipe to Edelgard.

“Hold on,” he says.

There’s a short silence as both Edelgard and Claude turn to Dimitri.

“This is about Capitalism,” Dimitri says. He gestures at the clownfish on the screen. “Right? It’s capitalism. It’s the. The thing, you said, El, about how it builds high expectations and then we’re swept away by them and forced into small boxes--”

“I was… technically talking about housing,” Edelgard says. “But okay. Go off, Dimitri.”

“I just think there may be a message, here,” Dimitri says. 

“That’s right,” Claude says. “But, uh. It could be about, you know. Family.”

Dimitri rolls his eye. “Ow. Oh. I didn’t know that could hurt, without…” He gestures vaguely to his patch, and Edelgard looks pained, for a moment, and lays a hand on his arm. He pats her on the face. “We all know about family. Look at El and I. We weren’t, then we were, and now we’re here.”

“Yes, you are,” Claude says. 

“Oh, hold on, we need to watch this thing,” Edelgard says. She takes out her phone. “Dimitri, there’s this video of a dog on an airplane, you need to see it.”

Claude and Dimitri lean over to watch the video. 

“Okay,” Dimitri says, after a minute, when Claude is cackling into his frankly enormous thighs and struggling to breathe. “But it _is_ a good wisdom.”

“I love you,” Edelgard says.

Claude sobs a choking laugh into Dimitri’s leg. 

“I love you, too,” Dimitri says. “Both of you. I love you so much. You know that, don’t you?”

Edelgard pats Dimitri’s cheek. “Yeah, doofus, I know.”

“You’re so precious to me,” Dimitri whispers. “Like the fish. In the movie.”

Claude is going to _die._

Edelgard relaxes a little as they swap the movie with an animated film about some kids who find a helpful spirit in the woods, which Claude’s never seen before but Dimitri says is Edelgard’s favorite childhood film.

“She watched it religiously,” he says, and Edelgard shrugs, leaning against Dimitri with her feet propped up on a pillow. “It was the first movie we saw together, I think. She had this VHS—“

“A what,” Claude says.

“It’s something peasants used to have,” Edelgard drawls. “Along with cassettes. And records.”

“Hey, I know what records are—“

“Shut up, this shit’s cute,” Edelgard says. “Look, they’re about to find the baby spirits.”

“Her first dance recital was to the music from this movie,” Dimitri whispers. Claude looks at Edelgard, half asleep on Dimitri’s arm, and wonders if Hilda knows this.

They watch the movie in silence, for a while. Dimitri cries when the girl gets lost, so Claude sits on his lap and kisses him until he starts laughing, and Edelgard shoves a pillow between their faces to pry them apart.

“I forgot to tell you,” Dimitri tells Edelgard, as Claude flops down to stare up at them both, his head in Dimitri’s lap. “I. Lost Father’s ring. After. During the. Hm. You know what. This may sound strange.”

“Hit me,” Claude says. Dimitri lays a hand on his chest, gently scratching at him through his shirt. It feels amazing. 

“Well. I believe our college president may be a kleptomaniac.” Edelgard frowns, and Dimitri pushes on, his eye bright. “I mean it, El. She came to my hospital room, you know, and she had all these rings on… And so did I, of course. Or, one ring. Father’s. And when she left, I didn’t have it anymore. I think she may… She may go from person to person, perhaps, and she just. Takes them.”

“Uh,” Claude says.

“I don’t… know if you should… bring this up to her,” Edelgard says, carefully. She looks stern. Serious. Like she honestly believes every word. 

“Of course,” Dimitri says, almost to himself, as he sinks further under the quilt, drawing Claude down with him. “It could just be capitalism.”

***  
“Hey, so, I hear this is where we’re supposed to go for tutoring -- hey, I know you!” 

Lysithea looks up from her experimental physics problems and stares in horror at the very loud, very _large_ man beaming at her from across the desk. She didn’t want to do this tutoring thing at all, but so far picking the earliest available time has been a surefire way to keep anyone from actually showing up. 

Until today. 

Standing there is a man dressed in gray sweats and a white tank top straining over his chest, tattoos visible beneath the soaked thin material and on his bare arms. His purple hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, and his gray eyes are irritatingly bright for it being half-past eight. 

The last time she saw him, he’d been escorting her out of Abyss for having a fake ID. 

“What,” Lysithea says. “No. No, you don’t. Know me.” 

“Sure I do,” he says, and why is he so _loud_ , honestly. “Yeah, yeah, you’re...Shirley Temple!” He throws his head back and laughs. “I thought you were in high school.” 

Lysithea turns her attention back to her physics homework without a word. 

“Hey. Look, I’m sorry. I was just doin’ my job, pal, nothing personal, yeah? But, uh. Is this physics 101 tutoring or what? I can’t figure any of this shit out and I gotta if I’m gonna pass it.” 

“ _You’re_ in school, here?” She doesn’t really mean that to come out quite as disbelieving as it does, but he looks to be at least six or seven years older than she is -- if not more, given she was a few years younger than her classmates. “Sorry,” she adds, quickly. “That wasn’t. I didn’t mean. It’s early.” 

“Yup. Haven’t been to bed, yet, actually.” He flashes a grin at her, hands behind his head, making all his muscles pull and shift. He’s got a lot of them. Who needs that many? “Worked last night, went running, now I’m here. So, about tutoring, you got a spot open or what? It’s Physics 101, like I said. Haven’t been in a science class since high school, and I took a break before starting classes so, uh, it’s been awhile.” 

“Uh.” Lysithea realizes with something like horror that she’s staring at the v-cut of his hips, just visible over the low-rise of his sweatpants. In her defense, it’s practically at her eye-level. “You should find someone else.” 

“Aw, Shirley Temple, c’mon! Don’t be like that.” 

“My name’s Lysithea,” she says, though she’s not exactly sure why she’s even bothering to tell him. “Not Shirley Temple.” 

“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” he says, grinning. “I’m Balthus.” He holds his hand out. 

Lysithea is not rude enough that she can’t shake his hand, though she still wishes he would go away. His hand is enormous. When he enfolds her own, smaller one in it, something swoops in her lower stomach and her face heats. “Balthus. What is your major, anyway?” 

“Well, haha, funny story, actually, about that! It’s physical therapy, and I wasn’t, y’know, really paying attention to the classes when I clicked on this one to add, so…” He smiles at her, wide and disarming. “I wanna help people who get injured, not figure out how far to throw something in the air before it falls down and hits me in the head.” 

“You don’t actually have to throw it that far, gravity’s pretty...consistent. Why didn’t you just drop the class if you don’t need it?” 

“Right, so, I didn’t actually know you could do that until it was too late,” Blathus says, waving a hand. “You gonna help me, or not?” 

“Depends.” Lysithea narrows her eyes at him. She doesn’t like him, but not because he made her leave Abyss -- she’d been ready to go, honestly, even if it was a little embarrassing -- but because she’s having some weird reaction to him in a tank top and doesn’t like it. 

The tank top and the...low-slung sweats. The tattoos, which are a strange, eclectic mix of things; she sees a crown, a lot of things that look like chains, and even brightly-colored, lush florals. 

“You want me to pay you, or --?” 

“No,” she says, quickly, focusing on his face and that’s...not helping whatever this is, maybe she’s allergic to his...detergent. Somehow. There. “The next time I come to Abyss you let me in, and you let me stay.” 

“Can’t let you drink, little lady,” Balthus says. “Yuri might lose his license and that ain’t a thing I’m gonna let happen. He’s my bro, you get me?” 

She sighs. “Did I _say_ you had to let me drink? Please. I’m not interested in that, I just want to be able to go with the rest of my friends.” 

Balthus’s grin widens. “Sure thing, then, little la--uh.” He catches himself. “Lysithea. Sure thing, Lysithea.” 

“Good boy,” she mutters, and flushes at the way his smile quirks sideways into a smirk. What the hell is her problem? It must be too warm in here. “Did you bring your book?” 

“Huh? Oh, no, I thought...you do that here? The tutoring, I mean?” 

Lysithea sighs. “Yes? That’s sort of the point of having a time for it, and me sitting at a desk. But, fine. If you want, I guess we can meet later.” _Please don’t wear that. Please wear a long-sleeved shirt. Maybe a sack._

“Here.” Balthus leans over -- oh, no -- and takes up her pen in his fingers, and she stares because -- because -- 

“Are your _knuckles_ tattooed?” Lysithea blurts out. They are. They say _king_. 

“Huh? Oh, yeah. The others, too, see?” Balthus wags his fingers at her from his other hand, which are tattooed to say _BASH_. He finishes scribbling something on Lysithea’s homework -- or what was going to be her homework -- and straightens. “That’s my apartment. Wanna come over later? I can order sandwiches!” 

“I -” Lyisthea clears her throat. “Sure. I can do that. But have your, your book. And _don’t_ get me a sandwich.” 

“You’d rather, what, have some pizza?” 

Oh, no. What is this? What is even happening to her, right now? “No, I -- I can eat before I - come over.” This is terrible. 

“Sure thing, but snacks help you study, yeah?” Balthus grins at her again, then he -- does this thing, where he stretches. His arms go over his head, he yawns, and a little bit of his tank top pulls up and she can see a trial of hair there, leading down and -- 

Nope. 

Lysithea focuses her gaze upward, but then she notices something about his nipples beneath the thin fabric of his tank top and they’re -- are they -- are they _pierced_? 

That’s when she realizes, with slight horror, that she thinks he’s attractive. 

No, it’s not just that. Lysithea has found people attractive, before. Claude, with his rakish, clever smile and pretty eyes. Leonie, with her arm muscles and take-charge attitude. Hilda, who smells nice and always looks effortlessly beautiful like a fashion model. Claude’s boyfriend, the shaggy-haired earnest prince with the kind smile and deep voice. His friend with the sharp cheekbones and dark hair who scowls all the time and is definitely gay. 

Edelgard, who Lysithea thinks is beautiful and terrifying. 

But as hot as she thinks these people are, she’s never wanted to put her hands on them and maybe -- maybe _climb_ them, or reach up under their shirt and play with their nipple piercings. 

“I have to do some work, go away,” she says, hastily, and watches as Balthus blinks, grins, and tosses her a lazy salute. 

“Sure, yeah, I need a shower and should probably clean up the place a bit. Thanks again, yeah? Me and my GPA appreciate it.” He turns around and heads for the door, but that’s not much better. He has a broad, tattooed back and even in those sweatpants, his ass is very. Very firm. 

Has she ever once noticed someone’s ass, firm or otherwise? Oh, Goddess. No, no she hasn’t. 

Lysithea puts her head in her hands and groans. Nineteen years it took for this to happen, and it’s _him_? Really? A guy with tattooed knuckles who signed up for the wrong class and didn’t know you could drop it? 

What level of experimental physics does she need to master before _that_ makes sense? 

***  
Claude finds Edelgard out near the greenhouse, tucked away against the side smoking her cloves with Hubert, who is standing like a sentinel and glaring at anyone who dares look like they want to get near the two of them. 

The glare does not deter Claude, who’s been on the receiving end of many in his day. “Hey,” he says, nodding at them. “Sorry, I don’t have long, I had to ditch my security detail by sneaking out of class in the middle of lecture. But we should, uh.” He clears his throat. “Talk about, you know. What to do.” 

“Hubert’s aware of the situation,” Edelgard says, cooly, ashing her cigarette. She seems far different than the giggly young woman who’d been cuddling next to Dimitri and laughing at dog videos on her phone. 

“What do you mean, your detail?” Hubert asks, eyes narrowing. “Are you referring to the man following you about? Because he’s over there.” Hubert points. “And I think he knows where you are, given he’s looking right at you.” 

Claude stares at him. “I don’t know if you think that’s going to work, or what.” 

“Believe what you like, von Riegan.” Hubert’s eyes narrow. “Is that really your surname, then?” 

“Almyrans don’t use surnames,” Edelgard says, and then, “Hubert, we’re fine.” 

They exchange a long, lingering glance, and Claude watches in amusement as an entire conversation happens between them without either of them saying a word. 

When Hubert leaves, Claude says, “You two are pretty close.” 

“Don’t.” Edelgard grinds out the cigarette with the heel of her combat boot. “It’s not like that, and it drives me crazy when people think it has to be. He’s got a boyfriend.”

Claude holds his hands up. “Sure. I get it. I just noticed. But hey, about that whole ring thing?” 

She glances around, then says, “We need to search Rhea’s office and see if Dimitri’s right about her stealing his father’s ring. And we’re going to need some kind of diversion for that.”

“Yeah.” Claude thinks about it. “Want me to do that? I can be pretty distracting. One of my talents.” 

“Hmm. You can certainly be...loud, I don’t think that’s a good idea, you being the distraction. Rhea knows you’re Dima’s boyfriend.” She gives him the smallest of smiles. 

_Ha, you like me,_ Claude realizes, but keeps that to himself. It’s nice, though. She’s Dimitri’s step-sister. And he’s decided he’s probably going to marry Dimitri, so. They can work out the international politics of it later. 

“Well. I’m sure I can find someone. Hilda, or --” 

“No,” Edelgard says, flatly, small smile fading. “I’d rather not owe her anything.” 

“I mean, you wouldn’t have to,” Claude says. “Not necessarily.” 

“If she knew I was involved? I would.” Edelgard shrugs and picks up her bag from the ground. “I have to go to class, but we’ll think about it. I...think we have some time, at least a week.” 

Claude blinks. “How do you…?”

Edelgard’s mouth tightens. “Trust me. Anyway, see if you can think of anyone. The thing is, it has to be someone Rhea doesn’t associate with any of us -- you and your Deer, me and my Eagles or Dima and his Lions.” 

“That’s practically the whole school,” says Claude, but he knows she’s right. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but our friend groups are kinda...melding, at this point.” 

“I noticed,” says Edelgard, who is still, as far as Claude knows, sleeping with Hilda. Then there’s Leonie and Dimitri’s friend Ingrid, and just the other day he saw Annette and Mercedes having lunch with Dorothea and Ignatz. Probably trying to talk her into a play or two. 

And then, of course, there’s Claude and his future husband. Speaking of… “Oh, and about Dimitri. I think we shouldn’t...necessarily, ah. I don’t mean, um, _lie_ to Dima, exactly, but --” 

“We are not telling him when we plan to search Rhea’s office,” Edelgard says. “I love him, but he’ll insist on going. And. No. I’m the one who gets thrown in jail for risky behavior and trespassing, if I’m caught I can swing it as some anti-capitalist agenda. Which, if you think about it, actually, this entire school --” She stops. “One thing at a time. Right.” 

“I’ll, uh, claim diplomatic immunity?” Claude suggests. He snaps his fingers. “I’ll say you seduced me with your ballet dancing.” 

“Scandalous,” Edelgard says, and nods. “All right. Figure out if there’s someone who can be our guard and loud enough to distract the faculty -- it’s not just Rhea we need to worry about. And I’ll be in touch.” 

Claude almost points out they have a class together three times a week and have plans to see a play later -- not one involving anyone’s relatives, this time, but it’s the campus improv group again, so who knows which is preferable -- but he has a feeling it would ruin the dramatic exit Edelgard is making. 

She seems to like those, so. 

Claude thinks as he heads toward the dorms about who he can possibly ask to run interference that isn’t connected to any of them. Garreg Mach is a small school, and the gossip travels fast -- but there has to be someone he can trust, right? Or pay? He’s got money. A treasury. Almyra won’t mind. He can pay them back later. 

“Claude.” 

Claude’s so lost in his own thoughts he doesn’t notice Lysithea until she appears, specter-like, beside him. He startles, then grins at her and holds out his fist. “Snuck up on me. Good job. Not easy to do.” 

She stares at him. “It’s very easy to do. You also almost walked into a bench. Anyway, I have a question.” 

Claude pouts at her. “But my fist.” He waves it a bit. “You’re making me look like an idiot, here, Lys.” 

“ _I’m_ certainly not doing anything,” she says, with her nose in the air. “You’re managing that on your own.” 

Claude sighs sadly and drops his hand. “What’s up?” 

She looks around, then leans in -- which is funny, considering she’s pretty short -- and mumbles, “HowdoknowyouwantedtokissDimitri.” 

He blinks. “What? How did I know I wanted two kids to be three?” 

She slugs him in the arm, hard. “You heard me.” 

“I -- didn’t, though, you’re mumbling.” Claude puts aside his own problems and the whole thing where he’s planning to commit what is maybe, probably, _definitely_ a crime, and focuses entirely on her. She’s staring straight ahead, arms over her chest, and there’s a blush on her fair cheeks. 

She’s blushing. She looks mad. He goes through what she just said, parses it out, and realizes what she was asking, and what it means. “Lysithea!” 

“Just answer the question, Claude.” 

Claude actually claps his hands in glee. “You want to kiss someone!” 

“Shhh,” she hisses, like they’re talking about -- well, committing a crime. “I don’t _know_ , maybe, that’s why I’m asking you how you knew you wanted to kiss. Dimitri.” 

“Uh, you’ve seen Dimitri, right?” Claude asks. “He’s tall, blond, gorgeous, earnest, I once saw him apologize to a cat for not having a treat when it meowed at him.” 

“Ugh,” says Lysithea. “Those are -- I guess it’s a good thing you’re you, then. And he’s...how he is.” 

Was that an insult? Probably. “Do you want my seduction help or not?” 

“ _No_ ,” she hisses. 

“Of course you do. I’m great at it!” Claude slings an arm around her shoulders and gives her a rough hug. Then he drops his arm, because he values his life, his kneecaps, and also respects that she has a very limited tolerance for physical affection. “So, who is it?” 

“Just. Someone who. Came to my physics tutoring hours this morning,” she says. 

“Wait. You do physics tutoring? Did I know that?” 

“No, that’s the point of doing it at eight in the morning, so I don’t have to actually _do_ it, Claude.” 

He pokes her in the shoulder. “You’re being cagey.” 

“Does that mean you can’t answer my question?” 

“Is the question how do you kiss someone, or how do you know if you want to? Because don’t you just know if -- uh, sort of -- huh. Wait.” He peers at her. “Have you, before? Wanted to, I mean.” 

She shakes her head. “No, not really.” When she glances up at him, there’s the first actual look of vulnerability on her face he thinks he’s ever seen. “Don’t laugh at me for that. We can’t all -- seduce princes.” 

“I wouldn’t laugh,” Claude says, sincerely. “Hey, thanks for coming to me. I mean it, I’m honored.” 

“Don’t make it a thing, just answer me,” she says, like some kind of world-weary octogenarian who just wants to know how the Internet works. 

“Okay, well, I guess if you look at them and you want to, y’know, put your hands on them.” He thinks about Dimitri, how to explain that rush he felt when they first met, the way he’d wanted to climb him like a tree when they were dancing together that night at Abyss. Or he was dancing, and Dimitri...swayed off-tempo. In his rugby jacket. What a dork. 

“Claude, hello,” Lysithea interrupts. “I can ask someone else if you’re just going to stare off into space and smile like that.” 

“Well, I mean, you’ve seen attractive people before, right? Like, hey, me.” He waggles his eyebrows at her, then bursts out laughing at her unimpressed look. “Fine, maybe not me, but someone. There’s a lot of hot people here.” 

“Yes, yes,” she says, like he’s being deliberately obtuse instead of her asking him to describe the very complicated and individualized nature of human sexual attraction.

“It’s like the dessert tray, right, you see them and you might like the idea of eating them all, but --” Claude stops, remembers she eats icing out of a container with a spoon for _breakfast_ , and then sighs. “I don’t know the specifics, but if this is the first time you’ve ever thought to ask someone how you know if you want to kiss a specific person, then I’d say the chances are at least eighty-twenty you do, in fact, want to kiss them.” 

“How do I...do you just ask, or what?” She demands, as they near the dorm. “Because that seems risky and potentially embarrassing. What if they don’t want to kiss you back?” 

“Well, asking is good, sure,” says Claude. “I mean, I just shoved Dimitri against a wall and climbed up him like a piece of playground equipment, so, maybe if your...person?...is taller than you, which, that’s probably a good bet given you’re a runt --” 

“Your knees aren’t necessary for your continued survival, von Riegan.” 

He laughs, shoves his hands in his pockets and catches the unimpressed look of his uncle as he starts making his way toward them from the respectable distance he’s been keeping. “People that want to kiss you will probably...tease you. Stand close. Want to touch you. Look at your mouth a lot. Make eye contact? Does that help?” 

“You do that,” she says. Then, with a look so horrified that it would be offensive if Claude didn’t have the world’s most gorgeous boyfriend to instantly give his self-esteem a rush, she says, “You don’t want to…?” 

“What? No, you’re great, but I’m taken and besides, I kind of _do_ need my kneecaps.” He smiles. “I can’t help it, I’m dying to know who it is.” 

Lysithea, having ascertained that she has all the knowledge she is going to get from him -- which, honestly, Claude’s not the most experienced with this, either -- looks him dead in the eyes and says, “then perish,” before turning and walking off. 

She actually scored more points on her dramatic exit than Edelgard. Who would have called that one?


End file.
